


This Calls For A Toast, So Pour The Champagne

by tinyporcelainehorses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family (Harry Potter), Alcohol, Angst, Canon Divergence - Post-Battle of Hogwarts, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, More or less - he's getting there, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Redeemed Dudley Dursley, Unplanned Pregnancy, and whatever comes in between
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-06-08 18:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19475812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyporcelainehorses/pseuds/tinyporcelainehorses
Summary: Dudley Dursley reluctantly and somewhat awkwardly accepts an invitation to his cousin's wedding.  While there, he meets Harry's friends, discovers some fascinating wizarding adult beverages - and meets Cho Chang, who has her own reasons to find herself out of place and drinking heavily at the wedding of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.In the months to come, this unlikely encounter will make him rethink his attitudes towards the magical world, drastically change the course of both of their lives, and change Dudley's relationship with his family forever.





	1. Of Wizards and Weddings

**Author's Note:**

> JK Rowling once said in an interview that she thought about having Dudley have a magical child on platform 9 3/4s at the end of book seven, but decided that no magical blood could survive contact with Vernon Dursley's DNA. In a long list of ideas she got wrong about what should happen to her characters post-canon, I've always thought that this was pretty near the top.
> 
> Mostly non-ship focused, but there are plenty of relationships happening in the background. Despite my reservations, this mostly takes the Harry Potter epilogue as written, but makes a few significant changes that the plot revolves around.

Dudley Dursley was proud to say that he was perfectly normal, thank you very much. But this, he thought, was probably the strangest wedding he’d ever been to.

It had started alright, he supposed – the little country church had set him at home, and for a moment, he’d almost felt like this was all worth it. Maybe Harry’s lot – the, _you know_ – wouldn’t be too bad at a wedding. After all, how many places could you go wrong? Drone along to a few hymns, kiss the bride, then onto somewhere else for the speeches, crap music and dancing. But once he got through the doors and saw the people already thronging Godric’s Hollow’s church, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. Why was he here? Really?

Long, strange robes touching the floor, on the men as well as the women, made Dudley feel very awkward in his Savile Row suit. He awkwardly sidled to a pew in the back, and prayed that no one would talk to him. Why was he here again?

“One of us should go,” he’d said down the phone, listening to the gentle crackle of the phoneline.

“You can’t just go because you’re guilty, Dudley. He’s… _not normal._ Do you really want to spend the day stuck with freaks like him?”

“He saved my _life_ , Mum,” said Dudley, tense. He wasn’t used to arguing with his parents, not real, _grownup_ arguments. But this was – seemed – important. Every time he thought about Harry, about how it had been when they were kids, a big, black hole opened up in front of him, a hole he didn’t like. Maybe it was time to start fixing up that hole.

“Yes, well,” she said down the phone, “you’d have been perfectly safe if he hadn’t brought his… _his lot_ and their trouble to Little Whinging.”

“He _saved_ me, Mum. He could have been killed. _I_ could have been killed.”

For a long time it was the only reply, until his mother sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “God knows it won’t be your father and I – he was keen enough on us not going to Lily’s.” Another pause. “Diddykins-“ Dudley hated when she called him that – “you won’t _tell_ him, will you? He was in enough of a state after the…” she dropped her voice low, instinctively fearing a blowup – even though they both knew Dad was out golfing. “That… _owl_ dropped the letter off. You know what he’s like.”

 _He’s getting worse,_ Dudley had thought, but instead said aloud, “Yeah. Mum, what-“

But, at that moment, he’d heard the sound of the front door, tinny through the line, but unmistakeable – and his mother saying, as brightly as she could, “That’ll be him now. I’d better go. Love you, petal.”

As he sat in the pew, shifting uncomfortably on the hard seat, he tried not to think about what his dad would say if he knew he was here. “Bunch of bloody freaks and reprobates,” said that inner voice of his father, the one that he’d bring out when drinking to amuse his new university friends. He tried his best to squash it, when he suddenly realised there was someone sitting next to him.

This would have been bad enough – after all, wasn’t _going_ to this wedding enough without being expected to _sit by_ these people? – but she was looking straight at him, curiously. She was pale, blonde, and Dudley noted that she was probably quite pretty. It was hard to really draw any conclusions, however, because before he was able to digest any of these facts, his eyes were drawn to her dress. Emblazoned on a yellow background, from her shoulders to her waist, was the huge face of Harry. It was _moving_ , Dudley noticed, with a touch of unease, leaning in and kissing a woman – he assumed the wife. What was her name, Jenny? The whole garment was really quite startlingly tasteless, and he thought – though he wasn’t quite sure – that he saw even the other witches and wizards (not a term that sat very easily in his mind) around him giving her odd looks.

She was smiling at him. “Hello,” she said.

“Um, hi,” said Dudley. “Your dress, it’s very, um…” Oh, God, why had he mentioned it? Surely she must know.

“Thanks,” she said brightly. “I was just going to wear my earrings-“ she waved a hand to the metal thunderbolts hanging from each lobe, “but I thought they might be too subtle.”

“Well, you… you really can’t miss it,” Dudley said, desperately looking for any out.

“No, I didn’t think so,” she said, smiling. “You’re Dudley Dursley, aren’t you?”

Oh God, how did she know? Did everyone know? “Yeah.”

“Ginny said they’d been surprised when you RSVP’d.” I bet she was, Dudley thought. “You look a little alike. In the eyes.”

“Oh.” Dudley definitely hadn’t heard that before. He’d never really thought of himself as anything like his lanky, weird cousin, with the funny scar, and – after a long summer in a hot bedroom – the faint but unmistakable smell of bird shit. Still, he was here because he was trying to mend bridges. “Thanks, I-“

“I’m Luna. Luna Lovegood.”

How did you have a conversation with someone who would _not take the hint_ that you wanted to be left alone? And someone so… well, _witchy_ , at that? Dudley found himself longing for back when times were simpler, when he could have just not showed up, ignored it, and laughed it off with his parents. Weirdo Harry found another weirdo to get married to, now let’s hope they get a house as far away from Little Whinging as possible. But, here he was, with a walking billboard for his cousin staring at him like she’d just discovered a fascinating new species. He sighed, thought about offering a hand to shake, and decided not to. “Hi, Luna. Good to meet you,” he managed.

“I’ve been friends with Harry and Ginny for – oh, ever so long now, years and years,” she said. “I don’t think you were ever very nice to Harry, though, were you?”

“I – well…” How dare she? But even though he felt a hand clenching a little into a fist, he’d had enough experience of wizards to know that this wasn’t the best place to start kicking up a scene. Besides, even if this was, well, _Harry’s_ wedding, it was a _wedding_. “I mean… that was, you know, kid stuff,” he muttered.

And the thing was, he added, once the first wave of shock and anger had died down – who asked that sort of question? – it wasn’t like she was wrong. There was a reason he was here, after all. It was just that, with all of this strangeness, it was really seeming like less and less of a good reason by the minute. He didn’t need to see Harry’s great life, his weird friends and admirers, any of this.

“It’s okay,” said Luna airily, “I don’t think he holds it against you.” She pointed up to the front, where Dudley saw, with an odd swoop in his stomach, Harry. Dressed in something ridiculous – it had a ruff, for God’s sake! – in black, and fretting with one of the gawky, ginger family Dudley had hoped to never have to see again. Just seeing them made him acutely aware of how his tongue felt in his mouth. “Look, there he is,” she said now. “I wonder if he’s nervous.”

Dudley muttered something noncommittal about everyone being nervous. He knew he was. What if Harry tried to talk to him? Seeing the other people thronging around Harry, he was suddenly very glad that he hadn’t been invited along to the stag night, too. If they even had those here. Even if they weren’t all quite as bad as her, what, exactly, was he supposed to _talk_ about with these people? Other than, clearly, his own childhood shames.

“Yes, I don’t think he holds it against you,” Luna was saying, as if she’d read his mind – and Dudley spent a horrible moment wondering if these people could do that, before dismissing that as just a step too far. “We’ve all done some bad things sometimes, and we’ve all been to some strange places with the war.”

The war. Dudley had never really understood that, never really understood his weird little cousin somehow was caught up in some war, not with armies but with wands and words, and, well, weirdness. But he’d seen enough of a short, terrifying glimpse to know it was real, spent that miserable year in that dreary flat in London while he, his mum and particularly his Dad had all tried as hard as they could not to show that they were terrified of the incomprehensible words and dark mutterings that the wizards who’d escorted them there had exchanged. And then, one day, a very tired sounding Harry had called – on the telephone, his father had announced, incredulous, like a _normal person_ – and told them that they were safe. It was all over, and they could go back.

They’d headed back to Privet Drive, Dudley had re-enrolled in Smeltings for his final year, and everything had gone back to normal, more or less. Harry hadn’t been there anymore, of course. No, it turned out that Dudley was just plain old Dudley Dursley now, and Harry was… a war hero, or something. He hadn’t mentioned it, not the one time they’d met up since (an excruciatingly awkward drink in a pub that had Dudley already regretted arranging five minutes before it started, and that he’d ended up drinking heavily throughout). Harry hadn’t looked like a triumphant hero, he’d seemed… pale. Worn out. Dudley had decided to ask him nothing about the war whatsoever, and Harry hadn’t volunteered any information about it either.

They’d talked about beer. Beer was safe.

“What was the war like?” Dudley suddenly found himself asking, curiosity overtaking everything else. “Was it… well…” He regretted asking about it immediately – how insensitive could he be?

But Luna just shrugged, unfazed. “Oh, it wasn’t much fun. A lot of bad things happened. But, it was, well, you know…” she waved a hand airily. “A while ago. We’re still here, mostly.” Suddenly, she sprang to her feet, pirouetting around to one of the more oddly dressed guests entering. “My dad,” she nodded. “I should really see him.”

“Well, it was, um, nice-“ but before he could work out exactly what to say now he was finally rid of her, she was gone, floating to the side of a man with wild, white hair in floor length mustard yellow robes covered in glowing, neon pink shapes. If there was anyone here who was her father, he thought, that was undoubtedly him. He bristled as they passed by, expecting to hear some snippet of conversation about himself, but, nonetheless, his ears straining above the growing commotion for the words ‘Harry Potter’s cousin’. He breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief when all he heard was them deep in animated conversation about whether they thought some family called the Nargles – why could _none_ of these wizards, his dad had once said, have nice, _normal_ names? - were coming to the wedding.

***

The wedding itself passed in a blur, somewhere lost in between boringly familiar and startlingly alien. Dudley had never seen a string quartet move through the air, playing itself before, true, but he had been to enough dreary family weddings to know what it was like. The bride came in looking, admittedly, radiant (quite what she really saw in Harry was entirely beyond him, but he supposed that, among wizards, too, there really was no accounting for taste), and wearing what was probably the most normal dress there. He _assumed_ that it was her father walking her down the aisle, but, honestly, there were so many redhaired men around that Dudley had given up, at this point, trying to keep track.

It took Dudley a moment to recognise what it was he was seeing on Harry’s face. Harry looked happy. Nervous, sure – and he bloody should be, thought Dudley, getting married at twenty-one nowadays – but happy. Dudley felt a sick, swoop of guilt, when he tried his hardest to think of when he’d ever seen Harry look like that – and came up blank. So, here it was, this new happiness, written plain on the face of this new Harry. Harry wore new glasses now, little golden half moons, a far cry from the bottlecap NHS specs he still peered through in Dudley’s memory, tape holding the bridge together after Dudley had invariably stomped on them. This was a Harry who stood up straight, who had his hair (for once) somewhat under control, was dressed… well, it was definitely very _odd_ , but probably even his father couldn’t have said it wasn’t smart. This was a Harry joining hands with his wife, who Dudley was, by now, pretty reliably sure was named Ginny, both of them glowing with something bright, something fierce, and kissing with such a startling (and decidedly unweddinglike) passion that one of the unending hordes of ginger relatives whooped and hollered their approval from the front row.

And, just like that, the last, interminable droning hymn shuddered to a halt (there were, Dudley thought, at least some things that seemed to be universal to magical and normal people alike), and the wedding was over. Dudley joined the endless, milling crowds, searching for a face he knew. There were more than he expected. An enormously tall man loomed into view, awkwardly shouldering his way through the throng, who made Dudley’s hand instinctively touch the scar on his lower back where an _extremely_ puzzled surgeon had cut away a pig’s tail some ten years ago. _Not him_ , Dudley thought immediately. He had, of course, met some of endless ginger relatives – but between the flying cars and the tongue incident, he decided that maybe, just maybe, he’d steer clear of them, too. Who else was there to talk to, then? _Surely_ not Luna, who was engaged in spirited dancing to music that, presumably, at least _she_ could hear, wand out and keeping time with some silent beat, slipping effortlessly into spaces Dudley hadn’t even known were there in the shifting crowds. Dudley thought idly about leaving early, slipping out – but, if anything, the room seemed to be filling up with more people pouring in. Was it just him, or was this tiny village church a lot, well, bigger than it had been when he came in?

Dudley liked to think of himself as sensible. Fairly reliable, fairly unrufflable. So when he realised that the room had changed so utterly he had no idea, in the crush of people, where the door was, he did his best to stay calm. _I’m Dudley Dursley_ , he thought to himself. _I get punched in the face for fun. I win trophies for it. I can handle any weird wizard shit_. He moved to the edges of the room, trying to find a door, but, aside from an entirely misguided adventure into the disabled toilet, he found nothing – until his slow path around the room swept him together with the one person who, he supposed, he probably should talk to before he left.

He found himself facing Harry and his new wife, who were shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with anyone who came their way. A stern looking old woman hugged both of them, exchanging a few words. _You could just slip away,_ Dudley thought. _Surely he hasn’t seen you yet_. _What if he asks you how you’re doing? Harry, with a job, and a wife, and a house, asks how you’re doing, and you have to admit that you’re just at uni, just doing nothing much, just trying to avoid spending too much time with Dad in the holidays?_ Come on, he told himself, straighten up. It’s only Harry. Just Harry. You’ll be fine.

There was just a moment to make the decision – just a moment, and, looking back, Dudley didn’t know whether he’d made it or not, whether he chose to go over to Harry, or Harry saw him first. Everything had happened so quickly, and, looking back with the veil of alcohol fuzzing the edges of the later parts of the evening, he had no idea whether it had been him or his cousin who made the first step. But, however it had happened, he was suddenly there, his hand in his cousin’s bony if surprisingly strong grip. He hadn’t meant to grip Harry’s hand quite so tight – some of his father’s lessons were much more deeply drilled into him than others - but Harry had gripped back just as hard. Dudley found himself withering under the twin threats of a genuine smile from Harry, and a steely look from his new wife. He wasn’t sure which of the two he’d rather take his chances with.

“Big D!” Harry beamed at him, with a nickname that was long lost in Dudley’s teenage shame but that Harry sometimes always managed to dredge up. That grin was setting Dudley’s teeth on edge.

“Yeah, man, um… good to see you. Congratulations,” he managed.

“Thanks! Dudley, this is Ginny.”

“Hi,” Dudley said, facing down the barely concealed hostility of a woman a head shorter than him.

“Good to meet you,” she said sweetly, not offering him a hand to shake. Dudley was, if anything, glad. He’d seen the look on her face before, seen that sort of determination on the face of tiny, featherweight boxers. Newcomers would laugh at someone so much smaller than them looking at them with such threat, but everyone who’d been around for a while knew to avoid that look like hell. They’d seen what it could do.

“Mum and Dad, um, send their love,” he decided to try, not quite knowing why he’d said it.

In fairness, Harry and Ginny’s laughter _did_ break the tension a bit. He found himself joining in, just to stop himself from having to say much.

“Yeah, right,” Harry spluttered. “Good one, Big D.”

“Mum did, um, ask me to… say hi,” he said lamely. 

“Oh, well… thanks, Dudley,” said Harry.

The silence yawned up, threatening to engulf the three of them. He thought about asking how work was, before realising he had absolutely no idea what either Harry or Ginny did for a living. Better not.

“Lovely day for it,” Dudley tried.

“Yeah, well, Ginny’s dad knew someone who helped us out with the weather.” _Okay_ , thought Dudley, _apparently they can do that too. This definitely isn’t weird at all._ “We’d better keep making the rounds,” Harry said, as both of them utterly ran out of anything else to say. “But look, stop, have a drink, won’t you? On us.”

“A drink? Bu-“

Harry waved his hand towards a bar, fully stocked and surprisingly as of yet fairly uncrowded, not too far away – and Dudley realised once again just how much this room had changed. He had no idea where the pews had gone, but now there were rows and rows of tables, a disorganised mess of chairs, and, apparently, a bar. However big the room got, though, enough people must have been pouring in from some invisible source to keep it absolutely heaving.

“I know you’re a pale ale man,” Harry continued – clearly, their long, awkward conversation about beer had been a big hit – “but, really, I recommend the firewhiskey.”

“Does it-“

“You’ll find out. See you around, Big D,” Harry said, giving Dudley a hearty slap on the back. And then they were gone, and one thing was for sure. Dudley really, _really_ needed a drink.

***

At first, Dudley thought the bar was unmanned. After eventually deciding that he really did need something stronger, and he’d maybe take the risk of following Harry’s recommendation of the firewhiskey, he found himself leaning over the bar, inspecting labels on bottles of Old Ogden’s and wondering with suppressed disgust exactly what butterbeer was. Just as he’d finally nerved himself up to picking up the bottle, however, a tiny hand touched his – and he looked up into the most horrifying face he could even begin to imagine.

It was the size of a human child, but he was sure that, barring some horrendous magical accident, it wasn’t human. It was like someone had taken a waxwork and slowly melted it, drawing out the ears to long points. It was wearing a tiny, baggy little tuxedo that was exceedingly grubby, and Dudley felt its tiny fingers close around his with a vicelike grip.

“Master Harry’s guests will not serve themselves.”

“Oh, um, okay,” said Dudley, recoiling. As the creature released him, he attempted to back as far away as he possibly could from it while still being at the bar. “Could I… could I have a firewhiskey, please?”

The thing gave no indication of having necessarily heard him, instead vanishing into a frantic blur of activity apparently unrelated to Dudley’s request. “Master Harry says that the guests must drink at the wedding, oh, yes, but he is going to be hiring other _wizards_ , and Kreacher says to him, Kreacher says that there is no need to be wasting Galleons, that Kreacher will do it, but Master Harry says Kreacher is _free_ now, oh, no, and Kreacher cannot _possibly_.” At this point, Dudley was strongly weighing up the relative benefits of leaving. But Dudley was, after all, that most curious of creatures: a university student. And however touched by wizarding weirdness this particular bar was, Dudley had to admit: he’d drunk at worse. And, despite himself – despite that voice of his father, deep inside his mind, bellowing at him to stop – he was _interested_. He was interested in this wedding that made no sense, in the magic he didn’t understand that surrounded him. He was even interested in this… this, well, thing, making him a drink, and he leant in to listen closer. “Kreacher _will_ not let other wizards take good work, take good _house elf_ work. Kreacher will get in trouble later, when Master Harry finds the wizards and witches who were supposed to be behind the bar.” There was the sound of slow pouring, and Dudley could see a tumbler slowly filling with amber liquid. Kreacher – that seemed to be the, well, creature’s name – paused for thought. “Perhaps Kreacher will leave the wedding early.”

A spindly, grubby hand slammed the firewhiskey down on the bar, but just as Dudley was about to reach out for it, Kreacher touched the outside of the glass with one long finger, and Dudley watched frost patterns dance across it. _Okay_ , he thought, _no need for ice at wizard pubs. Maybe there are a few things they have that aren’t so bad._ Then, taken aback: _I hope Dad never, ever finds out that I just thought that._

He raised the glass to his lips, and took a sip. The whiskey was chilled, chilled a little more than Dudley would normally take it – but the moment it touched his lips it was warm, spreading a long, golden glow that managed never quite to burn. He took a long sip, his tastebuds enveloped in a smooth, oaky heaven, and swallowed.

“Kreacher?” he asked.

The… well, he supposed he should simplify things, the _barkeeper_ (because, after all, wasn’t that what was important?) fixed him with a sullen glare, saying nothing.

“Kreacher, is this an _open_ bar?”

Kreacher nodded imperceptibly.

Dudley found himself warming to the wizarding world surprisingly quickly.


	2. An Open Bar

From his seat at the bar, Dudley was able to watch the wedding whirl by. Not long after Kreacher inducting him into his own personal heaven, plates started floating at head level around the room, bobbing along with an endless parade of food – much of it that he recognised, much of it that he did not. But however much he wanted it, and however much his stomach was complaining – it was, after all, a long time since the greasy full English he’d wolfed down at that motorway service station that morning – he did his best to avert his eyes and avoid it. He’d made the mistake once before of eating wizard food, and – to put it delicately – it hadn’t quite agreed with him. He’d have to pick up a takeaway on his way out of here. A late night kebab was, perhaps, equally as mysterious as the food appearing from thin air in front of him, but it was a mystery that he was, at this point in his life, considerably more comfortable with than the mysteries of wizard food. Wizard _drink_ , on the other hand? As Kreacher was proving to him with glass after glass of new delights, wizard _drink_ was a whole other ballpark entirely. And so the evening went on, becoming gradually warm and fuzzy around the edges.

There were speeches – and some of them he even attempted to follow. Everyone was, of course, tremendously happy for his cousin and his new… cousin in law? Harry and Ginny were, according to a serious, bushy haired young woman, brave. Harry and Ginny were full of love, and courage, words she stopped to define, at length, with examples from books that Dudley had neither heard of, nor ever cared to. (In both the Muggle and wizarding world, it should be noted, this particular description applied to every single book.) Harry and Ginny were “the strongest couple I know, mate,” according to the gangliest of Harry’s new family. Harry and Ginny were apparently so _fucking_ great, which Dudley was finding very hard to square up with a childhood where Harry’s best quality, in his eyes, had been “a punching bag who didn’t move too fast.” Somehow, Dudley didn’t think he came very well out of that. 

At least he could take comfort in the overwhelming cliché of everything. Dudley was trying hard to be respectful, but a lifetime of habits was making it very hard not to just roll his eyes at the news that, not only was Harry the person best suited in the entire world for Ginny, but, coincidentally, she, too was also the best suited for him. So when Luna – who Dudley had the sneaking, horrifying suspicion might be acting as some sort of _bridesmaid_ – came up to the front, Dudley felt, to his surprise, relief. Whatever she was going to say, at least he wouldn’t see it coming.

She cleared her throat, looking out serenely over the motley crew of people. At this point, it seemed like the room had stopped filling up, but Dudley could only imagine that that was because there was no possible way to fit anyone else into it. “Harry and Ginny’s marriage,” she began, “has been blessed.” _Never mind_ , thought Dudley, draining his current mug of butterbeer (better than he’d thought, light on the beer, heavy on the butter, and filling him up to make a cushion for other alcohol. Whatever sort of filthy gremlin Kreecher was, he certainly knew how to bartend.) _It’s more of the same_.

“Harry and Ginny’s love is written in the clouds. It is written in the autumn leaves blowing on the breeze, in the wingbeats of birds flying high above.” Luna was looking through the ceiling, through to a sky beyond only she could see – and seemed to be losing the crowd’s attention just as rapidly as she was losing Dudley’s. “Their two lives are the same, joined life. Their two families-“ Dudley realised with a weird lurch that, just for a second, she was looking directly at him, “will become one family. The two sets of tiny invisible creatures that fly in through their ears to chew on their thoughts-“ Dudley nearly spat out his drink – “are now _joined as they are_ , as hopelessly in love with each other.” Dudley noticed that many of the other witches and wizards in the crowd looked equally as bemused as him. Luna turned to Harry and Ginny. “Once your wrackspurts start mating,” she added, in a matter of fact tone, “you might find yourselves wondering about children of your own.” There was some bemused laughter. “But Harry and Ginny were not chosen for each other,” Luna said, stretching her arms out airily, “by the clouds, or the autumn leaves, or even the machinations of the nefarious global wrackspurt conspiracy. No, Harry and Ginny chose each other, and chose love. Even in a time of enormous darkness,” and everyone else in the room, Dudley saw, was with her now, nodding, solemn, “Harry and Ginny chose love over fear. There are a lot of people who would have loved to be here, but, because of that darkness, can’t.” There was no laughing now, only the room’s rapt, solemn attention on Luna. Dudley was aware of something enormous bubbling under the surface of the room, a great, shared sorrow. A hurt that he could see in the faces of everyone, in the lines of the mother of the bride’s face set cold and alone, in the long look shared by the two who had spoken before Luna, in the tight grip Harry had on Ginny’s hand. He could not reach out, couldn’t carry this shared weight. He didn’t even want to. But, in that moment, he couldn’t help but see it. “In the memory of all those who’ve fallen,” said Luna, “we will do what Harry and Ginny did. We will choose light over darkness.” She raised a glass – _had that been in her hand before_ , Dudley wondered? “To absent friends.”

“To absent friends,” said the room, as one.

“To absent friends,” Dudley agreed, while wondering who he was toasting. Mum and Dad? Somehow, he thought Harry might object to putting them in that category.

On the podium, Luna placed her hands on Harry and Ginny’s shoulders. “May your nargles be well behaved, your wrackspurts calm, your ghouls quiet, and your lives happy,” she said, and floated away.

After this, Dudley judged his stomach sufficiently lined with butterbeer to begin drinking again in earnest. Dudley was aware, vaguely, that there was dancing. Dancing by people other than just Luna, and with audible music, though he couldn’t say from where. He was even, more or less, aware of the numerous other patrons of the bar. Endless eccentrically dressed witches or wizards and uncountable redheaded relatives came to Kreacher in an endless trickle. But Dudley, hunched over whatever marvellous concoction Kreacher had summoned for him next, was immovable – an island in the stream of people. He saw those he recognised: Luna, an Indian woman draped over her arm in a shimmering sari that shifted from red, to blue, to green; the mountain of a man who’d been the first wizard he ever met, hideous in a mohair suit and draining dry a huge tankard of mead. But everyone else flowed through, and under, and over, and around the bar that Dudley had decided, for want of anyone to actually _talk_ to, to prop up. Everyone flowed around, while he – and Kreacher, he supposed, who he’d grown surprisingly fond of despite his increasingly threatening mutterings - stayed in place. Until someone new joined the bar; joined and stayed.

She had freckles delicately scattered across her nose. She had long, jet black hair in a simple ponytail, exposing the tops of her ears. She looked Chinese, or Korean, and was wearing a stunningly simple silver dress. All of this Dudley had noticed, and all of this he had found very attractive. But what really attracted him to Cho Chang – as he would say for years to come, although never to her directly – was the way she drank. That night, Dudley thought, Cho drank like a woman on a _mission_. They didn’t talk to each other – Dudley really couldn’t think what on earth he’d have to say – just sat, silently at the bar, occasionally asking something of Kreacher, who was giving them both refills and top ups without any instruction whatsoever. They just sat, and drank, side by side, not quite making eye contact as they worked their way through firewhiskey after firewhiskey.

It was, finally, the sight of Harry’s best man discovering Kreacher behind the bar, and chasing him around the room, wand raised, demanding to know what had happened to the barstaff that united them. The woman sitting on Dudley’s left laughed, and as they turned back to their drinks – their last drinks, he supposed, although maybe Kreacher hadn’t actually _killed_ the original barkeeper – their eyes met.

“Hi,” she said. “You’re a Muggle, right?”

“Yeah,” admitted Dudley. “Does it show?”

“A little,” she said, standing up and quickly and surprisingly steadily making her way around behind the bar. “Same again?”

“Please.”

“For a muggle, you know your way around a bottle of firewhiskey,” she smiled. “Go drinking with wizards often?”

Dudley shrugged, then watched her drain her tumbler in one fluid, easy motion. “Hey, don’t you think you ought to slow down a little?”

“Look who’s talking,” she said, smiling.

“Well, yes, but I’m…” Dudley tried to think of a polite way to say ‘probably about twice your weight’ and trailed off.

“Relax,” she said, waving a slim wand as Dudley tried not to flinch. “I can sober myself up any time I want, I’m not at any risk of drinking and flying.” _Oh_ _shit_ , thought Dudley. _Driving home._ He’d probably have to find a hotel or something – he was certainly in no hurry to let anyone cast a spell on _him._

“How do you know the happy couple, anyway?” she asked, with only a little distaste. Dudley realised he hadn’t been saying much, but it didn’t seem to matter; the stopper was off, now, and Cho was foaming over like a bottle of butterbeer.

“I’m…” Dudley thought for a wild moment about lying, before deciding not to. After all, what else could he say? “I’m Dudley. Harry’s cousin. How about you?”

She raised an eyebrow momentarily – but whatever Harry had told these people, _his world_ , about his family, she wasn’t getting into it just now. “Cho Chang,” she said, extending a hand. They shook. While Dudley hadn’t, of course, been raised to try a bonecracking grip with a _woman_ , he was more than a little surprised at the strength she gripped his hand with. “Funny story,” she continued, “I used to date him.”

“Oh shit,” said Dudley.

“Yeah, well, that’s why…” she waved her hand over a few of the empty bottles. “And it’s fine, you know? It was a long time ago, we were kids and we were both going through a lot. The war had just started…” Dudley decided to just nod wisely at this point, “and, well, neither of us handled it well.”

“So why did he invite you here?” Dudley asked. Maybe it was the firewhiskey, but he was intrigued, eager to hear more about the cousin he’d lived with, more or less, for seventeen years – and knew nothing about. He supposed he could have asked anyone here about Harry, but he was, in all honesty, more used to hearing information about Harry wrapped up in criticism. Who better to get that from than Harry’s ex?

“Oh, well, like I said,” said Cho, “it was a long time ago.” She leaned in closer, conspiratorial. “We were all in Dumbledore’s Army, of course: me, and Michael,” _who_? Dudley wondered, “and Harry and Ginny. And, well, everyone of course.” Dudley pretended to know what she was talking about – it was probably easier. “So of course, I used to date Harry, and Michael used to date Ginny. And then, well – Harry and me were through, and Ginny and Michael split up, and Harry and Ginny got together, and, well, the next year…”

“Hang on, hang on,” said Dudley, “this might be the firewhiskey talking, but I have no idea what’s going on. Did you _all_ date each other?”

***

The next three minutes were an agreeable, alcohol fused haze of Cho creating tiny, glowing coloured lights above various empty glasses and bottles, moving them around to indicate the complicated web of magical relationships. Dudley did his best to follow, and not let the fire whiskey take him floating off to around the ceiling.

“So, eventually, Harry was dating Ginny, and I was dating Michael.”

“Right,” said Dudley, “but Michael had already gone out with Ginny,”

“And I’d already gone out with Harry, good job,” completed Cho, patting him on the shoulder. Her touch seemed to bring him back down, remind him that he was here, in this room, someone crooning about ‘a cauldron full of hot, strong love’ over invisible speakers while, all around them, couples danced. “Sorry about that,” she said, “small schools mean everyone gets all mixed together. I’m sure it’s a lot less complicated in bigger muggle schools.”

Dudley laughed. “You’d be surprised,” he replied.

Cho frowned. “I’ve seen the schools in London, though. _Thousands_ of pupils, Hogwarts is tiny.”

Dudley shrugged. “Maybe. I went to an all boy’s school in the middle of the countryside. Believe it or not, no one really dated each other.”

It was Cho’s turn to shrug. “I feel like you’d probably be surprised, if you found out,” she said, with a wry smile.

Dudley ignored the insinuations. “The only way to really meet any girls, other than in the holidays, of course-“ he suppressed the hormone-laced memories of adolescent summers pining for Piers Polkiss’ sister – “was if you got to interschool competing in some kind of sport, and I-“

But Cho’s face had lit up, and before he could continue she jumped in. “What do you play? What kind of muggle sports _are_ there? I know there’s football, but other than that-“ in her excitement, she was threatening to knock over their collection of empty bottles and cause a cascade to the floor, and Dudley surreptitiously shifted them back.

“Oh, a bit of football and rugby when I was younger, but mostly boxing.”

“Boxing?”

“It’s a combat sport. You put on gloves and you punch each other, try to knock each other down.” Did they seriously not have boxing? He supposed they probably just cast spells at each other or something instead. _Mess up each other’s bodies in weird, unique ways_ , he thought, and shivered. Pig tails were probably only the start.

“No way.” Cho was dumbfounded. “You are _not_ telling me that Muggles just… _punch_ each other. For fun. And call it a sport.”

Dudley bristled instinctively – he was well used to people trying to talk boxing down by now. “Well, there’s a bit more to it than that,” he said, lamely. “It’s about manoeuvres, and tactics, and patience-“

“So you can punch another muggle in the face.”

“I guess.”

“That is legitimately the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, what special magical sports do _you_ play, then?”

Several minutes later, Dudley managed to verbally retreat from the barrage of Quidditch information. “You play this on _brooms_? Like, _flying_ brooms?”

Cho looked confused. “What would be the fun of playing it on the ground?”

“How do people not _die_?”

Cho shrugged. “It’s very unusual for that to happen. How do people not die from _professionally punching each other in the head_?”

That shut Dudley up.

“How come Harry hasn’t told you about this?” Cho asked, and Dudley felt the black hole of his relationship with Harry open up, yawning in front of them. He tried his best not to fall in. “I mean, Quidditch is just about the only thing we ever managed to talk about. For God’s sake, he’s marrying a professional.”

“Oh, well, you know Harry,” said Dudley quickly. “We just… well, once he got going, I’d tend to switch off, if I’m honest.” He decided to try a different tactic. “So, if everyone used to date each other,” Dudley began, “then how come-“

“I was invited?” Cho laughed. “Well, like I said, it was a small school, and, well, you know. Harry isn’t exactly the most thoughtful sort of guy.” Seeing how a stray strand of inky hair framed her cheek, Dudley tried hard to seem like someone who knew and condemned his cousin’s callous behaviour. “Him and Ginny had just decided to invite all of the old DA crowd-“

“DA?”

“Dumbledore’s Army, sorry, and so Michael and I both got lumped into that together, and, well, we both had a laugh about it. We’d been together a long time, and I thought-“ a wobble slipped into Cho’s voice, “I thought we were a sure thing. We’d moved in together. We were going to come together, and show off, and show how happy we were, and then-“ Cho took several big gulps, and closed her hand around an empty bottle, the knuckles white through her skin, “and then suddenly last week I find out he’s been sleeping with some _fucking_ Daily Prophet reporter and…” she took a deep breath, and Dudley tried to decide whether to offer her a comforting arm, or a comforting drink. The drink won out, and he stepped behind the bar, pouring a butterbeer for each of them. 

She gave him a weak smile. “Thanks.”

“You came anyway?” asked Dudley. “That’s brave.”

“Brave, maybe,” said Cho. “But not very clever.”

Dudley shrugged. “Why did you decide to turn up?”

“I don’t know.” Cho wiped a butterbeer moustache from her top lip, and Dudley followed her example. “Here,” she said, reaching out for his face, “here, you missed a spot – I guess I came because I still wanted to show I was happy. Doing fine. I’ve got nothing _against_ Harry, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but, well, you get invited to your ex’s wedding, and if you’ve already said yes – you can’t not go. That’s giving up.” 

Dudley nodded, still listening, but with the majority of his attention still focused to her hand on his face a few moments ago. “I suppose there’s an open bar of free coping mechanisms here, too.”

Cho gave a laugh, a boozy sort of laugh that helped Dudley realise just how much she’d had to drink. Him too. She was smiling, and their eyes met, and for Dudley, the whole, crowded mess of wizardkind out there, the confusing Lunas and difficult Harrys or the huge, tall man, with his painful memories, all of that melted away. There was just Dudley and Cho, Dudley and Cho and an open bar.

She looked into his eyes for a long moment, and reached out to touch his wrist. “So how come you need a coping mechanism?”

Dudley took a step back, his hands dropping to his sides – he just managed to stop himself making a fist. “I didn’t say that.”

Cho shrugged. “You drank it.”

“Hey, I-“

“Come on, Dudley,” she said, and suddenly she was standing up, standing next to him behind the bar, and her hand was on the small of his back, “come on, it’s obvious. No one drinks that much at their cousin’s wedding if everything’s okay.” _She smells amazing_ , Dudley thought. She paused. “He never mentioned you, you know. When we were…”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, not surprised,” said Dudley. There was a long pause.

“The newspapers had a few things to say, of course,” said Cho. _Oh, God_ , thought Dudley. _She knows. Does everyone know? It’s a miracle I haven’t been turned into a frog or something._ “But I don’t really… well, I don’t really believe the newspapers very much. First-hand experience.” _Thank God._

“Well,” he said, “it’s kind of... complicated. I don’t know. There’s a lot.”

Cho took him by the hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

Dudley had had no idea that the church was so crowded, so hot and sweaty, or even so loud, until they stepped outside, and the cool evening air hit him. Whoever they’d got to do the weather had clearly done a good job of it.

Cho followed him a moment later, peering methodically into the summer evening’s long shadows.

“No photographers,” she said, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “I’d have sworn that Witch Weekly or The Prophet would have sent someone. After all, it’s the _Potter Wedding_.” She sat herself down on the steps, and Dudley, stumbling a little, joined her. He was sure that the building, from the outside, was far too small to fit the packed throng of witches and wizards they’d just left. “Ginny Weasley, best Chaser British Quidditch has seen in a century,” _oh, come on, they’re just coming up with nonsense words now_ thought Dudley, “marries Harry Potter, who’s, well, _Harry Potter_. The _Chosen One_ or whatever. You’re telling me there’s that wedding of the century, and no one sent a single photographer? Someone must have enough spells here to keep this place on total lockdown.”

By now, Cho’s words were a steady stream of nonsense – a reassuring presence more for the sound of her voice than for any meaning in them. Dudley nodded, absently, leaning against her slightly and shivering ever so slightly. A slight breeze had stirred up, and his suit was thin – but, where his arm brushed hers, Cho’s skin was warm.

She touched his knee, and he placed his hand on hers. It went quiet.

“So you two didn’t get on?” she asked, finally, shattering what Dudley thought had been quite a cosy silence.

“It’s just… it’s complicated, you know?”

“With Harry?”

Dudley thought about it. He thought about the magic that had come into his life at eleven and ruined everything. Suddenly, Harry wasn’t just a target – he had something new and exciting that Dudley couldn’t have. But it was worse than that – slowly, the magic had transformed everything. One awful, hot summer day, when _something_ had made Dudley feel like, for a moment, he’d never be happy again, Harry had saved his life. And, in saving him, he’d moved from punching bag to real person, and Dudley had to live with that. With what it said about who he was, about who Mum and Dad were. And now, here he was, at a wedding where Harry was a grownup, a _real_ grownup, the centre of attention, a war hero with a government job and a house. Hell, it might have been the firewhiskey but he was pretty sure he just heard Cho refer to him as ‘The Chosen One’. Meanwhile, there was Dudley, awkwardly talking to his cousin’s ex on the fringes of the party, knowing no one, in between his days of pissing about repeating the final year of his business studies degree.

“Not just Harry,” he said, realising he’d let the question hang in the air much too long. I don’t know. It’s everything. It’s all just… complicated.”

Cho looked at him. The night had gone still, and the breeze had dropped. He was suddenly aware of just how close to him she was sitting.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Her arms were warm, and her lips were soft, and the world really was, just right now, perfectly simple.

Time passed in a blur, a thousand fractured images, reflected in tiny parts in the sequins from Cho’s dress. Cho’s dress against his skin. The feel of his hand running down row on row of sequins. Dizzily staggering their way, laughing, kissing, through the church’s car park, nearly empty apart from his car, and bizarrely, a baby blue vintage Ford Anglia. (It looked familiar, but Dudley was more than a little too preoccupied to try to place it.) Fumbling in his pockets for his car keys while Cho leant on the door, a wry smile dancing across her face, her hand gently caressing his chest. God, he was shaking.

The dress shifted – the reflections, amber streetlights on silver, shift too, exploding into a million pieces and coming back together to make something new. Cho’s dress, shifting, askew, her hair out of her ponytail and cascading down her shoulders. A particularly loud gasp – from Cho? From Dudley? Did it matter? – hanging in the air, and nervous laughter. Cho, face flushed, doing… something, legs either side of Dudley in the backseat, reaching over, tapping each window with her wand and making it opaque. “I don’t fancy an audience,” she grinned, before muttering something about a silencing charm. Dudley’s lips on Cho’s neck, breathing in the scent of her perfume. Cho’s hands… Cho’s hands everywhere. Dudley, muscles tense, feeling the warmth of her hands, the electricity running through them, and relaxing. Yielding. Reaching out to touch her… Dudley, thanking God that he kept condoms in the glove compartment (based on, so far, entirely unfounded optimism). Dudley’s hands trembling a little, fumbling the wrapper, and Cho swatting them away playfully. “We don’t need that,” she smiled, and raised her wand, gently tugging his underwear down.

She cast a spell on him. For the first time so far in his life, Dudley didn’t mind.


	3. Dumbledore's Army In Crisis

The living room went quiet when Harry walked in, and he stopped and stared.

This wasn’t, Harry thought, what he’d expected married life to be like.

Some of it fit the picture, he supposed. Ginny, lounging on the sofa in her pyjamas, still nut-brown from honeymoon sun weeks later. True, there were a few spots of Ginny that Harry had, perhaps, not been sufficiently diligent in covering with a sunshield charm, so her colour varied slightly, in places, from ‘nut brown’ to ‘angry lobster’, but married life was full of surprises. Reminded of one surprise in particular, he glanced at her stomach, lost under a particularly baggy plaid shirt. He knew she wouldn’t start showing for another two months, when they’d start to tell people – but all the same, he couldn’t help checking.

Ron and Hermione on the other sofa wasn’t entirely out of the picture he’d had of marital bliss, he supposed. After all, Ginny and Harry _liked_ Ron and Hermione, they really did. It was just that – well – Harry _worked_ with Ron. Harry had spent years sharing bedrooms with Ron, had shared a tent with Hermione for a year, and, he felt, had shared quite enough of his life with the both of them for seven years at Hogwarts to feel a bit, well, spread thin. They had nothing against them, but Harry and Ginny would, on the whole, rather have a little alone time.

While Ron and Hermione could just about fit into Harry’s idea of perfect married life, it was rather more of a stretch, he had to admit, for Neville and Hannah, nervously smiling at each other and holding hands like they were worried the other would float away. He liked them, and he and Ginny had been over the moon when, that spring, Neville had shyly buried news of them (finally) getting together in his nervousness preparing for his last interview to be Hogwarts’ new Herbology professor. But that didn’t really mean he wanted them there, unannounced, for Sunday breakfast. Luna, too, was a dear friend and, in theory, always welcome – but sometimes, it took a little, well, _preparation_ to be able to handle Luna. She’d brought Parvarti Patil with her, who Harry, while not disliking her, was less fond of – and he’d definitely thought that Luna and Parvarti getting together was one of the less likely couples that had popped up in the few dazed months after the Battle of Hogwarts.

In fact, his living room being filled with people at eight thirty in the morning on a Sunday was nearly the complete _opposite_ of what he’d been envisioning was ahead of him when he made his vows two months ago. Particularly out of place were the worried looks they were giving him.

He flopped on the sofa next to Ginny. “Hi everyone. Um, Gin – what’s going on?”

“Crisis meeting, mate,” said Ron. Unlike everyone else, Ron didn’t look worried. Ron looked like he was trying to suppress a grin.

“Oh _stop calling it that_ ,” Hermione snapped. “It’s none of our business.”

“It’s Harry’s, though, isn’t it?” Asked Ron, and Hermione was quiet for a moment.

“Look, what’s my busin-“ Harry tried to ask, but Ron and Hermione were still at it. Another reason, really, why – as much as he loved them – having to deal with them early in the morning wasn’t exactly his idea of a great time. Ron and Hermione’s idea of marital bliss seemed to involve an awful lot more angry bickering than his and Ginny’s.

“I still think that using the coins was a mistake,” Hermione said, crossing her arms. “Harry might need to know, but I hardly think everyone else does.

“We kept these,” said Ron, and Harry realised that he was waving a Galleon around, “in case we ever needed to get everyone together for a crisis. And I don’t know about you, but I think that _this_ – he waved his hands through the air vaguely – _this_ is definitely a crisis.” Harry realised with an odd lurch in his stomach that it wasn’t any Galleon – it was a DA coin. He’d really, really hoped that, weddings aside, they weren’t about to have any other Dumbledore’s Army gatherings.

“It’s about your cousin,” said Hermione. 

“Is he okay?” Harry asked. The wizarding world was mostly safe by now, but even a few years later, not every Death Eater had been rounded up, not every collaborator removed from the Ministry – and being related to Harry, being a Muggle? That could make Dudley a prime target. “Is he in danger?” He found himself rubbing his scar. It didn’t hurt – it never did, anymore – but still, whenever he was stressed, his hand unconsciously found itself there.

“He’s… fine, Harry, more or less,” Ginny said. As he looked at her, Harry could see a trace of Ron’s impish grin on her face, too – she was, at least, doing a better job of hiding it from Harry. “He’s just…”

“Having a baby,” said Luna, casually. Parvarti, running her fingers through Luna’s hair, giggled.

“He’s… having a baby.” Harry was having trouble processing this information. _Dudley_ was having a baby? He hadn’t even told them he and Ginny-

“Well, not all by himself, obviously,” Luna helpfully added.

“You’re all… here because my _cousin_ has got someone _pregnant_? I don’t even _like_ my cousin that much!” Harry’s eyes unconsciously moved to the huddled mass of weddings cards on the mantle, seeking out the incredibly bland, plain white card that had come addressed from the Dursleys. The handwriting, he’d noticed, had been Aunt Petunia’s only. He wondered if Uncle Vernon had been too apoplectic to sign. A single five pound note had been tucked inside – he and Ginny had laughed, and given it to his fascinated new father in law. “Why would my cousin knocking up some Muggle be any of my business, let alone yours?”

“Harry, it’s not just some Muggle,” said Hermione, calmly. “Listen, it’s… it’s Cho Chang.”

The room went quiet, for just a moment. It was… Cho Chang? Harry tried a million responses, and, his tongue tripping over them all, managed to settle on a simple, flat, “What?”

“I was behind the bar at the Cauldron on Friday,” Hannah said, looking up at Harry but flinching at direct eye contact. “I was serving a big group of Ministry workers when Cho and, um, Marietta Edgecombe-“

“ _Get over it, Ron, it was years ago, let up on her already,_” came a frantic, muttered conversation from the other sofa.

“-were talking, and Cho was upset-“

“What else was new?” Ron muttered, earning him a dark look from Hermione.

“-because she’d, um, slept with Harry’s cousin at the wedding and she’d missed her period. So she’d tested, and the spell came out, um, positive, and she didn’t really know how to tell him.”

“Cho,” said Harry. “Cho Chang. And Dudley.”

“You don’t have any other long lost cousins, do you?” asked Ron. “That, say, Cho would know about, but that you’ve never mentioned to us?”

“At… at the _wedding_? Are you sure?”

“Would it help if we wrote it down for you?” asked Luna airily.

Harry took a deep breath. “Well,” he said. “Thank you, Ron, for calling this crisis meeting of Dumbledore’s Army to order. Shall we begin?”

***

It was some hours later.

Harry was willing to admit that not a huge amount of crisis had really been _resolved_ , especially not after Ron’s suggestion that, well, if this was a crisis, they should really have a drink to be amply prepared to face it, and Hannah’s offer to apparate back to the Cauldron and pick up a few bottles. Harry had been relieved that Neville had declined a drink, too – too early, he said, and he had essays to mark once they were back home – so Ginny wasn’t too noticeable. His friends should probably take life one baby revelation at a time.

All the same, it had been rather fun, in a way. “Getting the gang back together,” Ginny had called it earlier, and as their conversations had flittered to and away from relevance to the ‘crisis’ at hand, Harry found himself rather enjoying a chance to be reunited with their friends. Another case to solve – another mystery, but, this time, no matter how indisputably _weird_ it was, how bad could the stakes really be?

“Hang on,” said Neville, frowning, “I thought Cho was going out with Michael Corner? Back when I was on invitation duty-” groans all round from everyone who’d lived through that ordeal, Harry and Ginny included “-I definitely sent one to the two of them.”

Ron looked at her askance. “Ginny, didn’t _you_ used to date Michael Corner?”

“For my sins,” Ginny sighed.

“And Harry used to date Cho, so…”

Ginny shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’m not the one who said ‘invite the whole DA, it’ll be just like old times.’ I did think having them there might have been a bit weird.”

Parvarti interrupted him. “Honestly, don’t any of you keep up to date with our friends?”

“What do you mean, Pav?” asked Luna, absently, head laid across Parvarti’s lap.

“Well, I had an owl from Lavender a week ago that Dean and Seamus had told her that they’d heard from Anthony Goldstein at the Kenmare Kestrels match that Michael had chucked Cho and got together with someone at the _Daily Prophet_.”

“Ouch,” said Ron.

“Poor Cho,” said Luna.

“And Lav was telling me because we’d _both_ noticed at the wedding that Cho had come by herself, and Michael wasn’t there,” Parvarti continued, in one giddy, breathless rush of scandal, “and so we’d _thought_ one of them had probably ended it, because Padma had said that they’d been on the rocks for months. Anyway, at the wedding, we both noticed Cho spent pretty much her whole time at the bar before leaving early, so _I_ think she was drunk and on the rebound. Honestly, it’s easy when you put everything together.”

“Couldn’t have been that drunk,” said Ginny. “One of the spells we put on the venue stopped anyone getting more than just tipsy.”

“Good thing, too,” said Harry. “God knows what would have happened otherwise with Kreacher behind the bar.”

“Harry,” said Hermione, “you _know_ he’s not been free long, it takes him _time_ to adjust to being out of servitude. You can’t really blame him for-“

“Hang on a second,” Ginny frowned. “Didn’t you tell Dudley to head to the bar, Harry?”

Harry thought back. Generally speaking, his meetings with Dudley were now so excruciatingly awkward he did his best to push them out of his memory. At least it was progress, he reminded himself, from when they’d just been excruciatingly painful. “I think so, yeah. To be honest, I was mostly just surprised he’d actually turned up.”

“I think he wants to mend bridges,” said Hermione, “he just doesn’t really know how. He’s trying to reach out, Harry.”

“Sounds more like he was reaching out to Cho to me,” muttered Ron.

“So they met at the bar, but they weren’t actually _drunk_ ,” said Neville, diverting an imminent third wizarding war breaking out on Ron and Hermione’s sofa. _Good teacher voice,_ thought Harry. _Hogwarts is in luck with him this year._

“I mean, they probably didn’t _know_ the room was enchanted to not let them get too drunk,” Hannah interjected. “If no one tells them, people usually just act drunk anyway. We, um, get that a lot with seventeen year olds out for their first firewhiskey.”

“And I reckon Cho must have drunk enough to think she was _plastered_ ,” said Parvarti. “I mean, at her ex’s wedding a few days after her boyfriend ditches her for someone else? I’d be hitting it pretty hard, too.”

Luna kissed her gently on the nose. “Try not to worry about that,” she smiled.

Neville’s brow furrowed in thought. “So they met at the wedding, they thought they got drunk, Cho hooked up with him on the rebound, something went wrong-“

“Anyone remember how she was at casting a shield charm during DA Meetings?” asked Ginny, earning a whoop of laughter from Ron and an eye-roll from Hermione.

“-and now she’s pregnant,” Neville finished. “What next?”

“Sorry, Nev?” asked Harry.

“I’m just saying, before we work out what _we’re_ going to do, we should probably work out what she’s doing next. What did she say, love?” he turned to Hannah.

She frowned. “Marietta asked if she wanted her to go with her to Saint Mungo’s. I, um, guess she meant for an abortion? But Cho, um, said she wanted to keep the baby. She said she’d already made her mind up. She just needed to work out what to tell him, um, Dudley.”

Ron let out a long, low whistle. “So, it’s official. Cho Chang and Dudley Dursley are having a baby.” 

Harry tried his hardest to digest this information, but, somehow, the shape of it still wouldn’t fit into his brain several hours later. The idea that Dudley Dursley would sleep with a witch, any witch at all, would have seemed, last night, laughable absurdity. But that it would be Cho Chang? That it would be Cho Chang, at _Harry’s own wedding_? Perhaps inviting the whole DA _had_ been a mistake.

All of this would be a lot to digest, but that they were having _a child_?

“We have to work out how to help them the best that we can,” he found himself saying.

Silence. All eyes on him. Ginny’s, constant. Neville and Hannah’s, trusting. Ron’s, bemused. Parvarti’s, amused. Hermione’s, concerned. And Luna’s… well, quite what Luna was thinking had always been somewhat beyond him and the rest of wizardkind.

“If that child’s a witch or a wizard, or – or even if it isn’t, they’re going to hate it,” he said. Suddenly, for the first time in a long, long time, the cupboard loomed large in his head. “The Dursleys will _hate_ it. And they’ll try to hurt it. To scare the magic out of it, like they did with me.”

“Harry,” said Hermione, “surely that’s for Cho’s family-“

“But we don’t know!” said Harry, and he realised suddenly he was shouting, and took a deep breath, before starting again. “I don’t know anything about Cho’s family. Do you? Do any of you?”

After some quiet muttering, it emerged that even Parvarti, whose stores of scandal and gossip were unparalleled, knew practically nothing about them.

“They’re Tornadoes fans?” Ron volunteered.

Harry sighed. “I know what the Dursleys are like,” he said. “And Dudley’s trying to be better than them-“

“Not hard,” muttered Ginny.

“-but he still _lives_ with them most of the year. If they treat this child like they treated me…,” Harry said, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. He felt Ginny’s arm around him. “I won’t let them,” he said. “Not again. I won’t let them shut the cupboard door on someone else.”


	4. A Tale Of Two Phonecalls

Noon came, and noon went, and in a grubby little Muggle student house far away from Little Whinging, Dudley Dursley began to stir from sleep. This was the life, he thought, easing his way gingerly out of bed. He’d managed to convince Mum and Dad that his Extended Summer Research Project was going to be such an essential part of his degree that they just _had_ to pay for his accommodation for the summer. What a _shame_ , his mother had said, tears pricking her eyes, that she wouldn’t be able to see her little Diddykins over the summer. Still, she understood that he had such important work to do. Dad, meanwhile, had made various disgruntled noises, but stopped short of saying anything too bad. Dudley had breathed a sigh of relief over that one, anticipating another of his father’s ever more frequent blowouts. Even one would have been worth it, though, if it had meant Dudley had got to avoid them all summer.

He felt… different. Ever since they’d been able to go back to Privet Drive, home hadn’t exactly felt the same, but the difference had been something Dudley could live with. But then he’d been to Harry’s wedding, and he’d met Cho… and, well, he’d learned a lot of things that night. Some of them stood out more, and were things he often thought back on fondly – but he’d also learnt, through probing questions from Luna, things he’d said to Cho, and nearly said to Cho, and chosen not to say to Cho at all, that there was something desperately wrong with his parents. That there was, or at least had been, something desperately wrong with him. And ever since the firewhiskey had washed up that tide of feelings, Dudley had felt his parents were… well, they were somehow in the same group of people as Harry, of all people. They might be related, but suddenly, he had a hard time looking either of his parents in the eye.

Well, it was a month into the summer, and Dudley had, in fact, diligently worked on his Extended Summer Research Project. He’d given it serious thought and had settled down and worked with some real academic discipline: for perhaps a total of three whole hours. Everyone, he told himself, worked in different ways. Today, he planned to work by sleeping in as late as possible (check that one off the list), hitting the gym, and watching an awful lot of rubbish telly. He was glad that he’d be able to slog through these extremely difficult academic tasks _without_ having to contend with Mum fussing around him, and those awful black holes of silence around Dad that would explode into white-hot anger. He was glad he wouldn’t have to walk past the cupboard under the stairs _once_.

It wasn’t until after Dudley had finished a healthy breakfast of sugary cereal and milk poured directly into a saucepan (the one clean vessel in the house) that he saw his mobile phone. He didn’t know why he had it, really – if anyone wanted him, they could just pop round. It wasn’t like his friends didn’t know where he lived, and as for Mum and Dad, he called them every week _anyway_ . But his parents had insisted, and – most importantly – _paid_ , and so the phone lived in his room, occasionally charged so as not to totally die, and, often as not, on mute. He grabbed it before he headed to the gym – maybe he could play snake on the bus - and stopped dead in his tracks, dropping his gym bag.

Twelve texts from Mum. Eighteen missed calls from home.

Dear God. He had the feeling he wasn’t getting to the gym any time soon.

Dudley rang home immediately. His parents’ phone barely got through one ring before someone picked up; Dudley had been hoping for Mum, but heard a distinctly Dad-like grunt, and his stomach sank instantly.

“Vernon Dursley,” his father said, and Dudley knew immediately that this was more than just a bad day. On a scale of Dad meltdowns, this sounded like it was somewhere between “boa constrictor birthday party” and “pig tail.”

“Hi, um, Dad, it’s-“ said Dudley, and then immediately had to hold the phone half a foot from his head as his father roared into it.

“YOU!” Bad, thought Dudley. Maybe worse than the pig incident bad. “Do you _know_ what has _happened?_ ”

“Mum just said to call right away,” he said, whitening knuckles gripping the phone.

“She said that _four hours ago_ ,” barked his father. “Four hours! What have you been _doing_ since then?”

Dudley wasn’t usually the target of his father’s wrath. God, he thought, how had Harry _coped_ with it for all those years? “I was, um, in the library,” he tried lamely.

“In the library? What’s the point of us _getting_ you one of these phones, boy, if you don’t _turn it on_ ?” _Boy_ ? thought Dudley, _Harry_ was boy. Dudley was ‘Dudley’, or occasionally, a couple of glasses of wine in and when he couldn’t persuade his dad not to, ‘Dudders’. Never ‘boy’. “Your mother and I have been here dealing with your… your….” For a moment, the tirade seemed to falter and run out of steam while he considered the appropriate word “your _fuck up_ , and you say you’ve been _in the library_.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, I just…”

“Do you know what I saw out on our lawn earlier today? In _broad daylight_ , over breakfast, for all the neighbours to see?”

“No, Dad,” Dudley said, shaking off the feeling that he knew exactly what it was.

“It was,” _an owl_ , Dudley thought, this part of the script at least familiar, “an _owl_ ,” said his father, wrapping the name of Privet Drive’s most hated bird in venom. “An owl, with a letter for _you_.”

Now the script was _much_ less familiar. Surely Harry wouldn’t send Hedgehog, or whatever the name of the big white one was, to Dudley? Harry was a fellow veteran of the many moods of Vernon Dursley, and had to know that sending Dudley an owl was asking for trouble. So did that mean – Dudley’s heart skipped a beat – that maybe, just maybe, _Cho_ had sent him something? He hadn’t heard anything from her since the wedding. Some of the details were a little hazy, and he wasn’t even sure they’d swapped any contact details. Besides, deep down he hadn’t dared to dream that the glamorous, playful witch in her sparkling dress would want to talk to him again. He’d chalked it up as a one time experience – a once in a _lifetime_ experience – and done his best to move on. But once the thought of Cho contacting him had crossed his mind, he suddenly realised that he’d been waiting for this all summer.

Dudley decided to test the water. “Did Harry…”

“ _Harry_ ?” Dad always exploded when he heard his least favourite nephew’s name, but today it had a particularly sardonic edge. “Oh, no, it wasn’t _Harry_ writing to you. It was one of your _other_ horrible little magical friends. When did _you_ go and meet people like _that_ , eh, boy? Didn’t we raise you right?”

“Who… who was it?” Dudley decided to try.

“Some awful foreign name. What was it, Petunia?” Dudley could hear him pacing the room, could hear the china shaking on the sideboard as his father stomped in white hot fury.

“Ch-Cho Chang.” 

“Well,” said his father, “this ‘Cho Chang’,” he spat out her name like it was some kind of nasty foreign food, “says that she needs to talk to you.”

“Does she?” said Dudley, attempting to blithely press on. This wasn’t exactly _ideal_ , he was willing to admit, but it wasn’t the end of the world. He was sure that, somehow, he could find some explanation that would at least somewhat mollify his father. But Dad went on, carefully laying each syllable down like a new flagstone on the road to hell.

“She needs to talk to you,” he said, “because she’s pregnant.”

Silence rushed down the phoneline faster than Dudley could have thought possible, worse than all the yelling in the world. The silence hung between them until he gingerly broke it. “She’s…”

“Pregnant.” It sounded no less like the clap of doom the second time, but Vernon Dursley gave it substantially less breathing room now. “And she seems pretty sure that it’s yours.”

“Dad, I-“

“After all these years,” said his father, and the quiet, determined tones made Dudley long for yelling, “and everything we’ve given you, _this_ is how you repay us? By…. With… with one of _those_ people?” Dad’s sputtering was done now, the measured fury starting to build in energy and volume: and here came the yelling. It was never far off to begin with, but it was still a novelty for Dudley to feel it directed at _him_.

“After all these years raising your ungrateful, dangerous brat of a cousin, you want _your_ child to be… to be just like him?” Dudley physically cringed away from the phone, holding it a little away from his ear, but it didn’t really matter. Dad’s volume was high enough now that he could have held the phone at arm’s length without any real difference. “Maybe we should have sent you off to that freak school as well, if you were going to go ahead and bring shame on us like this. But we raised you _right_ , sent you to Smeltings, got you all set up at university just like you wanted. I _told_ your mother, I said, no good would come of it. You don’t need all that namby pamby stuff, you want to learn in the _real_ world. In my day it was enough to go into business as soon as you were out of school, but the two of you insisted. Said it would be good for you.” Dad stopped to draw breath, and Dudley could hear more breathing in the background: quiet, a little ragged. Mum was crying. Whether it was because of what Dad was saying, or because of, well, everything, he wasn’t much sure – but he didn’t really think it mattered.

“Well, you went off to your fancy university, with the hippies and the druggies and the reprobates, _at our expense, I’ll remind you_ , to learn God knows what. We even paid for you to be away from home for this stupid summer project rather than getting some good valuable work experience with me in the city. And after all of that, _this_ is how you repay us?”

“Look, I didn’t-“ Dudley tried to interject, but there wasn’t any point, not when his dad had this sort of head of steam behind him.

“Well, it stops here, boy,” his father said, and Dudley was _very_ familiar with that tone of voice. It meant things were about to get _really_ weird for a few weeks, but probably a lot more fun; until now, it had been the “Harry’s in trouble” voice. There was a sort of mad glee rising through the fury, usually accompanied by the slamming shut of a cupboard door, or dad adding bars to the windows or nailing shut the letterbox. He’d never heard it directed at anyone else, and he’d certainly never expected to be on the other end. “It all stops here. If you think we’re paying a single penny towards you and whatever sort of freak baby one of _that lot_ has, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re on your own now, you and whoever this Cheng-“

“Chang,” Dudley corrected automatically under his breath, but Dad naturally wasn’t paying him any attention.

“-is, you can deal with your little horned devil baby all by yourself. What do you think about _that_ , eh?”

Finally, for longer than a second, a crackly silence settled in on the phoneline, and Dudley was faced with the fact that once his father had finished speaking, he was going to have to think of something – anything – he could reply to him with. He took a deep breath, and- “Answer me, boy!” Dad barked at him.

Deep breaths. Dudley was still standing, frozen, by his front door, too hit by the enormity of everything that had happened to even sit down. He tried, he really tried, to reply, but the best he was able to manage was a sort of scrambled squeak. He realised that it wasn’t just Mum crying.

“That’s what I thought,” his father growled. “How long has this been going on, anyway? You and your cousin laughing and spending time at whatever depraved get togethers that _his kind_ has?”

“Dad, I didn’t-“

“Don’t even _think_ about lying to me. We’ve fed you, put clothes on your back, given you only the best, and ever since your freak cousin gets rid of some dementoids that he brought home from school with him, you’re hanging around _him_. Don’t think I haven’t seen you!”

“I wasn’t, Dad,” said Dudley uselessly, “I just-“

“And now I find out you’ve been seeing his freak friends, too? Getting up to who knows what and getting them _pregnant_?” Vernon Dursley took a final, deep breath. “Don’t worry about keeping your fancy little mobile phone charged up, because I shouldn’t think that you’ll need to worry about missing any more calls from us. And don’t even dream of showing your face around this house,” - and then there was just the sound of the receiver clattering down and the dial tone.

Slowly, Dudley thawed from being frozen in place. _What now_ ? There was so much to think about, so many practical considerations –he needed to find somewhere to live at the end of the month, he needed to find some _money_ , he needed some way for his parents to _ever_ talk to him again, he needed to… God, he needed to talk to Cho… He took a deep breath and tried to collect his scattered thoughts. He needed to do all of these things. But what he needed most of _all_ , he decided, looking at his gym bag lying forlornly on the floor, was to get out of the house and punch some things.

***

Harry’s new parents-in-law had always been _very_ good gift givers. But with time to reflect on it in the months after the wedding, Harry had realised that this had been because the gifts he’d received until now had been entirely from Mrs. Weasley. (She’d taken, since the engagement, to insisting that he call her Molly, which he was sure he would never, ever be able to do.)

But Mrs. Weasley had done so much for the wedding. Ginny, her mother and Hermione had thrown themselves into it with a plethora of magically moving charts that Harry had previously only seen in one of Hermione’s revision timetables or an Oliver Wood Quidditch gameplan. (Luna had also, allegedly, been helping. As far as Harry could tell, her main contribution was floating in every couple of hours, asking if they _knew_ that the Ministry used the wizarding marriage records to gather the data they used to fake the existence of Ilvermoney, and then wandering off.) Harry’s theory was that Mrs. Weasley had been so busy moving heaven and earth to pull the wedding together that she’d asked her husband to do just _one_ thing, and sort out a gift for the newlyweds. And so he’d set about it with his trademark vagueness, and had bought them… a telephone.

Admittedly, not just _any_ telephone. Mr Weasley had _done_ some things to this telephone, and while Harry was absolutely sure it was a landline, they didn’t seem to need to actually plug it into anything in the house or pay anyone for it to function. But, despite the lovely thought, Harry had to admit that it didn’t quite strike the same note as, say, the watch Mrs. Weasley had given him for his seventeenth birthday. As far as he could tell, the main use they got out of it was that every Sunday evening, without fail, Mr. Weasley called it from his _own_ telephone for a breathlessly excited chat, most of which he spent being thrilled about being able to hear their voices at all. The Weasleys only lived about half an hour away, as the car flies, and Harry and Ginny had tea with them at least once a week; so Harry was beginning to suspect that his father in law had mostly given them this telephone as a gift to himself.

It was evening. Harry was struggling with a particularly tricky section of his auror training handbook and thinking just how much he missed having Hermione’s notes to… borrow. Ginny, rainsoaked, had just got in from a flying session he badly wished he’d been able to join her for. And then…

“Is that dad’s phone?” Ginny asked, her flame-red hair flicked water onto Harry as her head whipped around.

Harry heard the ringing, too, muffled. “It’s Wednesday. You don’t think something’s wrong, do you?” Harry frowned, reaching for his wand. “ _Accio_ phone!”

The kitchen drawer burst open, showering the floor in old Quidditch match programs and chocolate frog cards. The phone raced into the lounge, only slowing down as it clipped the doorway on the way in, but Ginny was too fast for Harry and snatched it out of mid air like a snitch. She gave him a look that said, quite plainly, that _one_ of them had gone pro, and it wasn’t him, and picked up the receiver. “Dad, are you okay?”

Ginny frowned, and for a moment, Harry felt a swoop of panic. He was getting better now, but every pause, every piece of bad news, every unexpected call, could be the one. Any minute now, she could turn to him and say “there’s been an attack”, and it could all start over again. So what she _did_ say when she turned to him managed to take him completely by surprise.

“It’s your cousin,” she said, with a puzzled smile, holding her hand over the receiver. “You know, him with the particularly fast little seekers.”

She handed it to him and, before he could really digest what was happening, Harry found himself putting it to his ear. “Hi, Dudley,” he said, while his mind screamed ‘don’t talk about Cho, don’t talk about Cho, don’t talk about Cho’ at him. After a second’s thought, he added “how did you get this number?”

“Hi.” Dudley sounded… not just tired, Harry thought, but _defeated_. It was a tone of voice he’d only really heard from him once before, back when there had been dementors in Little Whinging – the moment that had set the two cousins on the strange, rocky road of awkward tolerance they were on now. “Oh, um, it was in the Yellow Pages.”

 _Really?_ Harry thought. Clearly, Mr. Weasley had spared no expense in the purchase of his wedding gift. “Well,” he said carefully, with a few suspicions about where this might be going, “it’s, um, good to hear from you, mate. How are you doing?”

“Oh, you know,” said Dudley, words heavy with doom-laden resignation, “pretty good. How about you?”

“Can’t complain,” Harry said, before suddenly panicking. _What the hell was he supposed to say next?_ “Listen, D, thanks for coming to the wedding.” Ginny shot him a look, eyebrows raised, as he frantically improvised. She moved up next to him so she could make out Dudley’s side of the conversation crackling down the line. “It was really nice to have you there,” Harry added. 

“Thanks,” Dudley said, before adding, in the least convincing attempt at subtlety Harry had ever heard, “Actually, um, now you mention it, I got chatting to some of you friends at the wedding and I wanted to stay in touch. But, you know, I didn’t really get a chance to get their details.”

Harry, doing his best to ignore his wife’s whispered comments, adopted a nonchalance about as sincere as Dudley’s. “Oh, really?” He said. “I can always send them an owl, I guess – ask them to get in touch. Who did you have in mind?”

“Well, I got chatting to Luna,” said Dudley, who would be happy never to have another experience quite as weird as that conversation. “And, um, Ron,” he said, adding someone he’d never exchanged a single word with, but who he was at least pretty sure he could name. “oh, and there was one other person,” he added nonchalantly, “I think she said her name was Cho Chang.”

A silence – _no, Harry thought, a pregnant pause_ – settled over the conversation for a second, broken mostly by his wife trying to suppress her giggles. Harry sighed. It was probably, he thought, actually very funny if he stopped to think about it. Dudley and Cho Chang. It was _ridiculous_ . The trouble was that when he stopped to think about it, that was when he started to _really_ think about it. His cousin seemed to be an okay guy, despite a good fifteen years or so of practice of being an absolute bastard. But his aunt and uncle…

He shook his head, trying to clear it of the cloud of thoughts descending on him. “Sure, I can get you their addresses,” he said, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Gin, would you mind grabbing the invitation list? They’ll all be on there.” She looked resentful at missing out on more of the gossip, but he felt like he might need a little space for this particular conversation. And then, because there _was_ a Gryffindor part of him that longed to charge right into the situation, he enquired innocently: “Funny that you were chatting to Cho. What did you two get talking about?”

The awkwardness down the phone line was palpable – although this was pretty standard for any kind of interaction with Dudley in the last five or six years. “Oh,” said Dudley, and Harry could _hear_ the strained grin down miles and miles of magically enhanced phoneline, “just this and that. That sport, you know, Squidditch.” _Thank God Ginny wasn’t there to hear that_ , thought Harry, _or she’d be doubled over with the giggles._ And then, suddenly, the words came pouring out of Dudley. “Harry, listen, she wrote to me but the letter went to Mum and Dad, and it’s bad, she’s _pregnant_ , they’re not talking to me, and I don’t think they ever” – was that Dudley _crying_? – “will. I don’t know where I’m gonna live and I don’t know what I’m gonna do, I can’t have a kid, I…”

Dudley had worked himself into a horrible, agonised silence, and Harry stared at the wall glumly, filled with the slow realisation that _he was meant to say something_ . He was fifteen again, on the mean streets of Little Whinging with his cousin, but this time he wasn’t sure a patronus was going to do much good. “Um…” he said, and immediately felt like it had been worse than saying nothing at all. “Hey, look, mate, it’ll be okay, honestly.” What else was he supposed to say? _They’ll come around_? Harry had a lot of words he’d use to describe his aunt and uncle, many of them ones he would not repeat in polite company, but he didn’t think that ‘forgiving’ was going to enter that vocabulary any time soon. His heart was thudding in his ears, punctuating the hiss of the phoneline and Dudley’s uneasy breathing. Harry tried to centre himself, looking at Ginny hovering in the doorway, amusement given way to concern, and he sighed.

“Look, Dudley,” said Harry, the name feeling strange and alien on his tongue – but somehow, this didn’t feel like a Big D moment. “We can get you in touch with Cho. You guys can talk it over, see what you want to do. And… and if you need us, we’re here.” Ginny looked a little sceptical, but came closer and laid a hand on Harry’s arm – he felt his heartbeat slow a little.

“Thanks.” Dudley sounded small, and a long way away. “You don’t have to. I mean, like…” Harry heard a rustle through the phone that he thought might be a shrug, and found himself wishing that they could have this conversation through a floo-powder head in the fireplace or something else more _normal_. Then again, at least like this no one was expecting him to look his cousin in the eyes. “I don’t know,” Dudley continued, “I haven’t been great to you or anything.”

“We were kids,” said Harry. It was hollow, useless, and left a lot unsaid. Plenty of kids, after all, knew better. But right now, that wasn’t the priority. “Look,” he said, the words sneaking out of his mouth and surprising him. “You’re… you’re not by yourself. Ginny and I, we’re…” the words snuck out of his mouth unguarded, “we’re having a kid too. I know it’s different, but…. I’ve got a lot I need to learn, too. We can… help each other out, okay?”

“Congrats,” said Dudley after a slight pause.

“Hey, um, you too,” said Harry. “I guess.”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Dudley. “But… thanks. Really. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but at least… I don’t know. After Mum and Dad, I didn’t know if you’d…”

Harry fought down the urge, hot and burning, to snap at Dudley that he wasn’t anything like _them_. “It’s okay,” he said, instead. There were years between the two new fathers: years of punches and mocking laughter, but there was more, too. There was the flash of a stag on a Surrey street, and silent offerings of tea, an awkward handshake, strained conversation over beers… “I’ll be here. If you wanna talk, or if you need help.”

After Harry had given Dudley Cho’s address – somehow, he’d lost any interest he’d previously had in contact with Ron or Luna - and after they’d exchanged strained farewells and promises to meet up for a drink sometime soon, Harry set the phone down with a click. He felt… well, he felt a lot of things, but right now he mostly felt tired. He rested his head on Ginny’s shoulder, and they sat together for a few minutes, sharing the silence, not feeling the need to talk just now.

Finally, she kissed him gently on the forehead, and grinned at him. “Hermione’s going to kill you, you know. Well, her and Ron, but of the two of them, I think Hermione’s the one I’m going to worry about.”

“What?” asked Harry. There had been plenty going through his head, but he had to admit that this hadn’t come _close_ to any of it.

“The _first_ person you told that we’re having a kid,” she said, stroking his hair, “is _Dudley Dursley_ . The two of them lost out to your big dumb _Muggle cousin_.” 

Harry laughed, and, at least for a moment, the weight on his shoulders lifted a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're well past the halfway point, by now - but the chapters are getting a little more complex to write. The next update may be closer to two weeks out.


	5. Best Laid Plans

_I have to stop meeting witches and wizards in bars,_ Dudley thought a week later, fingers anxiously drumming on the outside of his pint glass as he glanced at the door, checking for Cho for probably the fifth time that minute. _At best, it’s awkward. At worst_ …

He had to admit that, in the short term at least, the last time he’d met Cho had been one hell of a fun worst-case scenario. He’d headed back home some hours later than initially planned, sobered up thanks to a spell from Cho and only mildly dishevelled. He’d hit the motorway with a grin, thinking that getting laid really wasn’t anything he’d seen on the horizon for Harry’s wedding – and maybe, just maybe, having a hard time shaking the impish smile of the pretty witch in the sparkling silver dress. 

And then, last week, his parents had called and – he looked up at the door again, hoping for Cho’s arrival to interrupt that particular train of reminiscence. But the more he looked at the door, the more Cho wasn’t there, so he sighed, knocked back his pint, and set it down. He thought briefly about buying another, but he had to make the cash he had right now last – especially with a baby on the – no, best to block out that particular line of thought too. Block it all out, and hope like hell the beer hit soon. Or that Cho arrived. Preferably both.

***

He’d been pretty lucky, all things considered. Not with all of this – _all of this_ was a horrendous nightmare. But after the worst had happened, Malcom had had a spare bedroom in his flat in London, and hadn’t really asked any questions. That had been the first priority taken care of for now. Getting a job was, Dudley thought generously of his efforts the last week, a work in progress, but he had a roof over his head at least.

His next priority had been contacting Cho. This had been a welcome relief: puzzling out how he was going to get in touch with her meant that he was far more busy thinking about _that_ than what he was going to say once he _did_ find her. Somehow, in among all the words that had been said in that fateful phone call, it had slipped Dad’s mind to give him anything he could have used to talk to her. From what he remembered of Dad’s outbursts – and somehow, they’d seemed an awful lot funnier when they were directed at someone else – wizards weren’t exactly the telephoning types. In fact, the more he’d thought about it, the less he realised he knew about Cho. He didn’t know where she lived, didn’t know what she did – he mostly just knew about her teenage dating life, and it turns out that wasn’t a great way to track someone down. And so he’d called Harry, and… all _that_ had happened. But somewhere, among the tears, the pauses, and the mutual confessions of impending fatherhood, he’d got an address: a London flat not too far from where he was crashing.

Dudley had never been a particularly big writer. Smeltings gave plenty of homework, but they’d also given him plenty of smaller boys he could copy it from, or, in a pinch, bully into doing it for him. So when he settled down at Malcom’s tiny kitchen table with a much chewed pen, he hadn’t known _what_ to send to Cho. Who wrote letters nowadays? Most Muggles – Dudley supposed that he was going to have to start using the language now – would probably settle for a ‘sorry I knocked you up’ greetings card, but wizards seemed a bit more old fashioned. In the end, he opted to keep it pretty simple:

_Dear Cho,_

_I know you tried to get in touch but I didn’t quite get your letter exactly. But I still heard Big News. I’m ~~living~~ staying in London right now too, can we meet for a drink? Maybe just a coke for you… I don’t know much about your type of pubs but the Spoons on Denmark Street is pretty good. Write back with a time and I’ll be there. We need to talk about a lot._

He’d fought long and hard with himself over how exactly to sign off. He was pretty sure you were _supposed_ to end proper grown up letters with ‘yours sincerely’, but that definitely felt all wrong. He was pretty sure that the last letter he’d written, a thank you note to Aunt Marge some fifteen years ago, had ended with ‘lots of love from’, at Mum’s insistence. That didn’t fit here either.

He ended up settling for a simple “Dudley”. Then, after a minute’s thought, he added “Dursley” afterwards – then had second thoughts and crossed that out. _If I don’t send this now_ , Dudley thought, _I’ll cross the whole thing out and have to start it all over again from scratch_. So he’d carefully folded it inside an envelope, found a stamp, and posted it.

Two days later, Dudley and Malcom were playing PS2 in the evening, Malcom taking care to avoid asking Dudley anything about why he was staying there and Dudley taking care not to respond to the unasked question. Suddenly, there was a loud thud from the next room and Malcom hit pause.

“The fuck was that?” He frowned, rising from his seat. “Sounds like a bird hit the window or something.”

 _A bird_ , Dudly thought, springing to his feet, _shit shit shit_. “Oh, I’ll check it out,” he said, his tone as airily casual as he could force it to be. “I need to piss anyway. Need anything while I’m up?”

The barn owl Dudley found on windowsill in his room was only a little stunned: but around its leg was tied a roll of something like paper – thicker, and older feeling. Dudley had never really had a chance to see one up close on its deliveries before: an owl was usually accompanied by his father screaming, and he’d not given any thought to the messages they actually carried before now.

“Everything okay out there?” shouted Malcom from the lounge.

“Yeah, hang on a min, I’m just looking for something,” said Dudley, willing the bird in front of him to say quiet.

“Sure man. If you’re not back in a minute, I’m unpausing without you.”

Trying to work as quickly as possible, Dudley’s shaking fingers fumbled the ribbon, and the bird fidgeted – when he managed to pry the note away, the bird gave a mournful hoot.

“Oh, thanks,” said Dudley, and then immediately felt stupid. The bird turned away with about as much dignity as it could muster, considering that it had recently smashed headfirst into a glass pane – and flew into the night.

“Is that an owl or something?” Malcom shouted from the other room. But Dudley barely heard him. He was too busy looking at the message he’d seen on the parchment once he unrolled it, written in a careful, looping hand:

_Sounds good. I definitely didn’t have to look up what a Spoons was. Sorry I can’t join you in any more drinking after last time… How about tomorrow night at seven? I’ll see you there._  
_Cho x_

***

He looked to the door of the bar again, fiddling with the damp beermat – and suddenly, she was here. She was in muggle clothes, dark jeans and a blue t shirt that she didn’t seem entirely at ease in. _She’s not showing yet_ , said a part of his brain he was determined to ignore. Cho was scanning the room for him, uncertain. He raised a hand to wave at her, and as he did so, knocked his empty pint glass, sending it rolling across the table. As he caught her attention, he grabbed it with his other hand and narrowly avoided it rolling off the table and shattering on the floor. _Smooth,_ he thought. _You’ve got this, Dudley._

She came over and sat down across from him, and he wondered for a moment what to do next. Should they hug? They almost certainly shouldn’t _kiss_. But somehow, a handshake seemed to formal. She settled the matter by giving him a light tap on the shoulder. “Hi,” she said, and even after everything, just that touch set a kind of magic flowing through him that was entirely unique to Cho.

“Hey,” he said. Close to, he could see how tired she looked: her eyes were heavy with a lack of sleep, and when she wasn’t making eye contact with him, she was staring slightly hazily into the middle distance. “How… how are you doing?” he asked.

She gave him a weary smile. “How do you think? I’ve been throwing up all morning – you’ll excuse me if I don’t grab anything from the bar.” He shrugged – he hadn’t exactly been expecting her to crack open a bottle of red. “I’ve been mainlining pumpkin juice, my mum says it’s meant to help, but I feel like all it’s done is given my body more ammunition to force out into the nearest toilet.” She sighed. “When I can reach it, I’ve already had to vanish a couple of accidents. How are you doing?”

“Not great. My parents, um, weren’t exactly thrilled about the situation.”

She patted his arm, and Dudley did his best to suppress the shiver this sent through him: now was _not_ the time. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope my letter didn’t… I mean, it was the only way I could get in touch.”

“It’s... fine,” said Dudley, not sure if it was. “They had to find out somehow, I suppose. There wasn’t ever going to be a good way to break that news.”

“I’m sorry, though,” she said. “I thought my parents were going to literally kill me, but they’ve been… okay. They know it’s been a tough few months, I think they mostly just want to help out, even if they’re disappointed.” Cho shrugged. Dudley nodded and tried to look like someone who understood what this sort of constructive, healthy relationship with one’s parents was like. “I’m sorry your parents aren’t taking it well,” she added. “Maybe they’ll get used to it.”

Cho had somehow cut through his entire miserable situation and found the only take on it that could possibly make Dudley laugh. “Yeah, um, I’m not so sure,” he said.

She peered at him inquisitively. “You said at the wedding, that you and Harry was… complicated.” Dudley nodded. “Is that part of it?”

“Yeah.”

“I get it, Dudley.” Cho took a deep breath, and they made eye contact. She no longer looked distant and glazed – he had her undivided attention, and Dudley was incredibly glad, glad to be basking in her attention and her understanding. “Look,” said Cho, “Sorry for going out on a limb here, but it’s pretty clear that Harry was always your parents’ favourite. But I’m sure eventually they’ll-“

“What?” Dudley was glad that he’d finished his drink some time ago, because if he’d had any in his mouth right now, he’d have spat it all over the table, Cho, and their unborn child.

“Look, I’m just saying, I’m sure they’re all over Harry, but you’re-“

“No, that’s… um, that’s really not it,” said Dudley carefully. “They’re not exactly Harry’s biggest fan either.”

“Oh!” Cho was blushing a little. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“It’s fine,” Dudley said. “Honestly, it… I don’t know, it’s _so_ wrong that it’s kind of refreshing.”

She shrugged. “I just sort of… I don’t know, everyone always fawns over Harry for being the _chosen_ one, and being so _special_ , and he gets _so_ much special treatment. Everyone bends the rules for famous Harry Potter. You know that he’s the only auror _ever_ to not even finish school, him and Ron?” Dudley nodded, trying to seem like someone who knew either what that meant or why it was quite so scandalous. “I just assumed that…”

“It’s not…” Dudley shrugged. “It’s not that. They really don’t like Harry that much, either. I don’t know if he’s even going to _tell_ them he’s having a kid, to be honest.”

“That he’s _what_?” Any sense of awkwardness he was getting from Cho evaporated as she looked at him keenly, eyebrows raised. “You’re telling me he and Ginny are-“

Dudley nodded. “Yeah. Apparently, I don’t know. I called them to find out how to get in touch with you-“ Cho was looking at him quizzically, and he shrugged. “Oh, Mum and Dad didn’t get round to giving me your details before they…” he decided to leave a pause instead of actually _saying_ the words ‘cut me off, kicked me out, and told me they’re never going to speak to me again’. “I had to call Harry to work out how to get in touch with you.”

“And Harry just _casually dropped_ that they’re having a baby?”

“No, not exactly, I…” Dudley shifted in his chair, and felt Cho brush up against him reassuringly. “I was pretty cut up about it. I’d only just called them, I realised I had to find a place to live, that I was never going to… to see them again…”

“It’s that bad?” Cho was looking at him with concern, and Dudley wanted badly to get out of this pub. Maybe if it was just the two of them, if there weren’t other Muggles surrounding them… maybe then he could get all the words out that stumbled over each other and fought for attention. But they’d chosen this spot as… neutral ground. Somewhere safe for both of them while they worked out everything they needed to about this whole mess that his life had become. He found that he could only barely meet Cho’s gaze.

“Yeah,” he said finally, “yeah, it’s… it’s bad, Cho.”

“Well, I…” she shrugged. “I’m sorry. It’s never easy, losing people, no matter how it…”

“It’s fine,” said Dudley. “I don’t really want to talk about them just now.” _Or ever_ , he added to himself.

“Of course.” After a moment’s quiet, she gave him a weak grin. “Are you… are you okay talking about Harry? Because you _can’t_ tell me that piece of gossip and not follow up on it.”

Her smile was infectious, and Dudley found himself returning it. His entire world was upside down right now, but what did that matter? Cho Chang was smiling at him. “Oh, just… I told him about everything that was going on. And how… I don’t know, how I don’t feel ready.” He put a hand on hers, trying once again to stifle the thrill, eager to reassure her. “And… I don’t want you to think I’m not going to step up, I-“

“Hey, it’s okay. I get it. Me too.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Anyway, um… I was saying that and he… said he and Ginny were having a baby. And that he was scared too, and…” he shrugged. “I think he was trying to help.”

Cho laughed, although it sounded fairly humourless to Dudley. “Oh, that has to be just about the most Harry Potter story imaginable,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure he meant well, but he really thought that him and his _wife_ having a baby together was the same as you and me…”

The words hung there, both of them finishing the sentence themselves. Dudley suddenly realised that there was so much to talk about that they’d barely even _talked_ about. “Cho?” He said, and feeling himself say her name made him far more excited than he had any right to be, given the next question. “The, um, the…” he motioned generally towards he abdomen.

Cho looked at him evenly. “You can say baby,” she said, “it’s not going to make my waters burst right here and now.”

He smiled weakly. “Okay, yes, the baby, your – our baby…” Just saying it felt like he was making it more real, speaking it into existence.

“Yeah?” said Cho, entirely serious now.

“What are we going to do?”

Cho took a deep breath. “I think I want to keep it.” She shook her head, the black ripples of her hair catching the light even in the gloom of the pub. “Actually, no,” she said, “I _know_ I want to keep it. I know this is all, like, the worst timing, and there’s going to be a lot I have to deal with, but…” she shrugged. “I just really want kids.” _Apparently having kids straight out of school is just a wizard thing,_ Dudley thought. “Like, I’ve wanted kids as long as I can remember. And… the timing might not be right, but it’s not like any of the plans I’ve made before have worked out for me.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m just ready to roll with the punches.” She smiled at him. “There, I learnt a boxing word. I hope you’re proud.”

It wasn’t fair, Dudley thought. It wasn’t fair that he was trying to focus on what they were talking about, on these important decisions that were going to shape not just their future, but someone else’s entirely… and she was making him _laugh_. Dudley reached out, his hand touching hers. “That’s okay,” he said. It… was, he supposed. It was terrifying, and he wasn’t ready for it, but what _was_ he ready for, now? What didn’t scare him? It wasn’t up to _him_ if Cho wanted to go through with this – for better or for worse, he supposed, he was along for the ride now. He looked at her. Dudley Dursley and Cho Chang – parents. He still couldn’t quite see it. “So, are we gonna, um…” Cho looked at him quizzically, as Dudley reached around in this pool of deep awkwardness for the right words. “I want to be a good dad,” he said eventually. “I want to be there. Do we… do we live together? Do wizards have…” Dudley’s background of being a student kicked in, and weeks of watching The Jerry Springer Show and Jeremy Kyle helped him find the words, “custody agreements? Visitation rights?”

Cho smiled at him, and Dudley tried very hard not to feel his mood immediately lifted by it. “Well, ever since Michael moved out, I’ve been looking for a flatmate,” she said. “Nice Muggle neighbourhood, too, don’t worry.”

“That’s… great.” Said Dudley. “Since my parents… Well, I’ve been looking for a place to stay lately,” he finished lamely. “And I want to be around as much as possible. For the baby.” _Right_ , said a treacherous voice at the back of his head, _for the baby_. He did his best to ignore it.

“I just want to make sure you understand, though,” she said, “There’s a spare room. I do mean _just_ for the baby.” She smiled at him, and Dudley’s stomach decided to ignore any of the words she said and do a flip anyway. “I had a really great time at the wedding! And I really like seeing you. But I think we’ve both got…” she waved in the general direction of the world, “a lot going on right now, you know? And I don’t think that this is the best time to start anything new. You understand, right?”

“Of course,” said Dudley, in an even, measured tone that showed no disappointment at all. Hopefully. He felt the conversation stiffen up and decided to try a different tack: there was no _time_ for his wounded ego, no time for the conversation to lapse into silence: there was too much to sort out, too much that was too important to leave. “So, um, will they… will they have magic?”

“The baby?” Cho asked. Dudley nodded. “Oh, yeah,” she said, “almost certainly. I mean… I’m a witch, and that’s almost always enough anyway, but also…” Cho frowned, doing some kind of quick mental arithmetic, “Your aunt was Harry’s mum, right? Because Potter’s a wizarding name… so you’re related to a muggleborn, you must have some tiny bit of magical blood in you too.”

“It’s that easy to work out?”

Cho shrugged. “There’s some kind of special table you can run it all through and get an answer if you’re really curious, but it’s pretty cut and dry here. You’re going to be having a magical baby.” Dudley did his best not to flinch at the word, and saw Cho noticing. “Is that… okay with you?”

“Of course,” said Dudley quickly. “I… I was just thinking about my parents. They’re not magic’s biggest fans, and so they wouldn’t…” he flailed, reaching for the words, and shrugged. “Fuck _them_ ,” he said, finding two words that fit surprisingly well. “ _I_ don’t care, and I kind of… I think magic’s pretty cool anyway.”

In the moment after expressing this deeply blasphemous thought aloud, Dudley noticed that the sky failed to fall on his head with a deafening roar. In fact, nothing had happened at all, apart from Cho giving him kind of a puzzled smile.

“That’s why they threw you out?” she said.

Dudley nodded. “I mean, I think I’d have been in some deep shit if I’d got _anyone_ pregnant, obviously. But when they found out I’d met a _witch_ , let alone…” his mind wandered for a second to a very fun memory of exactly what he _had_ done with a witch, and his cheeks flashed crimson and he went quiet.

Cho laughed, gentle. “And here was I thinking they were just racist.”

“Oh,” said Dudley, “I mean, that too, don’t get me wrong.” She laughed again and somehow, for a second, even his parents’ cruelty was something he could laugh at and then set aside. “Hey,” he said, changing track, anxious to cover all the burning questions he had for her, “where do you work? What do wizards…do?” Dudley knew he wasn’t going to understand a word of the response, but if he and Cho were going to be in this together, he knew he should find out a little more about the situation.

“I’m a junior liason officer at Gringotts.” Despite his attempts to keep a poker face, she smirked at him. “I, uh, work in a bank in… well, the Muggle equivalent would be human resources. More like… goblin resources.”

“Goblin resources,” said Dudley, “right.”

“It’s… okay. I don’t know if I want to do it forever, but it’s a good start and it’s stable.” She shrugged. “I can’t say when I started I asked what the maternity leave policy was, but I feel like they’ll at least be pretty supportive. What about you?”

“I… ah.” Said Dudley. Suddenly, this line of enquiry didn’t seem like it had been the best idea. “Well, I was a student, but when Mum and Dad…” he shrugged. “It’s probably not what I should be doing right now anyway,” he said. “With the…”

“Baby, yes,” said Cho, coaching him through it with a slight eyeroll. Dudley really hoped he wasn’t wearing out her patience.

“I just feel like I should bring in some kind of money,” said Dudley wretchedly, who had never felt less employable than he did in that moment. If he’d taken Dad up on his offer for a summer’s work experience at Grunnings, he’d _still_ have been kicked out of the house after a flaming row, but at the very least he’d have been able to put a few months of something practical on his CV. Somehow, “I spent two months procrastinating on a research project” didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

“So you’re… between jobs?” said Cho.

“Let’s go with that, yeah.” He tried to avoid meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I mean it’s not your fault,” said Cho, “you didn’t know you were going to be…”

She trailed off, and it was Dudley’s turn to fill in. “Bringing a little life into the world?” he said. The words crept, unbidden, from the kind of horrible phrasing he’d heard his mother use to describe the arrival of babies she Personally Approved of. He suspected that in this situation, she’d be more likely to use some of the words she’d use for babies she _didn’t_ approve of: ‘born into shame’ came to mind, as did ‘broken home’, and, whispered with quiet emphasis, ‘single mother’, usually followed by his father grumbling something about benefits.

Cho laughed. “Wow, that’s one way to put it.”

“I’m trying,” said Dudley, which was _broadly_ true. Up until now, so much of his time had been spent thinking about Cho – worrying about if he was going to be able to find her, if she’d want to talk to him, what they were going to do, whether they would… he shook his head to dislodge that particular train of thought. No sense in indulging _that_ right now. He had answers now, or they were working on answers, and even if a few of them were not exactly what he’d wanted, they were a lot better than stewing in uncertainty. Now he had room left inside his head to actually devote to work out what _he_ was going to do next, instead of only thinking about what _they_ were going to do next. Of course, said a treacherous voice inside his head, now that he’d _seen_ Cho – the flash of her wry smile, the glistening of her hair, the gentle touch of her hand on his arm – he was likely to spend even _more_ time thinking of her…

“I’d offer to help,” said Cho, “but I think I was pretty distracted through the term when I was meant to be learning about muggle careers.”

“With what?”

Cho went quiet for a moment, and Dudley worried he’d said the wrong thing. But the hint of a smile crept back across her face – and Dudley hated himself for having spent so many seconds searching for it. 

“If you must know,” she said, “breaking up with your cousin. Among… other things. It was a tough year.” She seemed calm right now, however, and was looking at him intently. “Dudley?” His mouth was dry, suddenly, dry enough that he was really craving another beer. He wasn’t able to say anything, so he just nodded. “Dudley… thanks. For tracking me down, for coming here, for everything.”

Dudley said “of course.” It wasn’t enough, but what else was he supposed to say? He’d never really been interested in words: they’d never seemed important. He’d had endless toys to slam around until they broke, he’d had screaming that either had no words or where the words themselves hadn’t mattered, and later he’d had bulk and fists and frowns. Harry might have got sent to school at eleven with a reading list, but when Dudley went to Smeltings, they’d given him a stick to hit people with. All the things he needed in the world hadn’t needed many words to make him happy, or safe, or to get him what he wanted, so he’d never paid words much attention: but somehow, he felt like if he’d only cared about words his whole life, he’d never have the enough words – have the right words – to say to Cho at this moment.

“You didn’t have to. I mean, you did, you’re doing the right thing, but… it would have been easy not to. You could have stayed with your family, you could have…”

“I couldn’t,” said Dudley. “I needed… I mean…” Her hand was in his, their fingers entwined, and he didn’t know when it had ended up there.

“I’m just glad you’re here with me,” said Cho. “I’d much rather do this with someone else than do it all by myself.” He squeezed her hand tight; it was easier than words. And then their eyes met, and words became entirely superfluous anyway.

Before he really knew what was happening, before he even realised who started it, they were kissing. Kissing Cho should, he knew, after everything they’d talked about, be raising yet more questions: but as her hand grazed through his hair and her lips pressed against his, all he found it bringing him was certainty, rising through his chest to fill his whole being.

She tasted faintly of pumpkin. Dudley broke away for a second. “You’re okay?” he asked. “This is okay? You’re not feeling sick, or…”

Cho shook her head. “Come on,” she mumbled, giving him another peck on the lips, “let’s get out of here.”

He stood up slowly, uncertain of what was coming next. But here was Cho, smiling invitingly, and suddenly it was easier to make that step. “Do you want to…” Dudley decided to make one last attempt to be gentlemanly, and to play by the spirit of their agreement earlier. _Just for the baby. They had far too much else on their plate right now…_ “do you want to meet again and talk more about this tomorrow, or…?”

He left the sentence hanging in the air and Cho swatted it aside impatiently, “Honestly,” she said, “It’s _fine_. I’m asking you to come back to mine.” He recognised the look she was giving him from the wedding, and it made his whole body shiver.

“Earlier,” he said, “you said… about how I should just move in for the baby, about…”

Cho shrugged. “I say a lot of stupid stuff sometimes,” she said. “And like I said, I like spending time with you. I had a really great time at the wedding… and now…” her hand was resting on his chest, and Dudley found himself very interested in ‘and now’.

As if from far away, he heard some part of himself still sorting out the logistics, answering the important questions, even when he was getting less and less interested in the answers. “But my stuff,” he heard himself say, “my bags and…”

“We’ll get it in the morning,” she said, and kissed him, and Dudley was suddenly struck by what an _excellent_ idea that was. The sooner they could get back to Cho’s, the better. “Come _on_ , Dursley,” she said, “it’s not like you can get me pregnant _again_.”

Dudley had to admit that she had a point.


	6. Dudley Dursley, House Husband Extraordinaire

The night was, just like before, magical.

Dudley slept better than he had in months. It was the same kind of easy, exhausted sleep as after a really good workout – he supposed that his evening _had_ been a workout of sorts. But sleeping next to Cho helped: Cho was warm, and soft, and wrapped herself around Dudley in the night in a way that banished all the worries that had been keeping him up recently.

Early the next morning, Dudley blearily swam into consciousness to the sound of Cho projectile vomiting in the next room.

“Are you okay?” he called out, springing out of bed. The floor was a mess of crumpled clothes, piles of odd, thick paper, books, and God-knows-what-else – he found his footing uncertainly and started scanning for his clothes, because he realised he was completely naked.

“I’m fine!” called Cho from the bathroom, sounding completely miserable. “This just sort of-“ she gave another huge wretch that made Dudley’s stomach squirm in sympathy –“happens now.”

“It’s not because of anything we did last night, or-?”

Cho gave a mirthless chuckle. “No,” she said, panting a little, “more something we did back at the wedding. Can you bring my wand in here please? I didn’t quite make it.”

“Okay!” said Dudley. God, being pregnant sounded miserable. What had he _done_ to her? He picked his way across the floor, only just catching himself after he tripped on a red ball hovering about a foot off the ground which had “Interdepartmental Gringotts Quidditch League” printed across it. It bobbed strangely when he put weight on it, then settled back in place. He supposed he’d get used to this, although he wasn’t quite sure whether he was thinking about the magic or the sheer levels of mess. He’d thought his student house was bad… God, what did her wand look like?

The sight of Cho totally naked and covered in her own vomit was a decidedly less enticing prospect than Cho totally naked the night before. She looked rough, but burst out laughing when Dudley entered the room, avoiding an unfortunate streak along the floor and clutching her wand between two fingers at arm’s length.

“It’s fine, it’s not going to just go off in your hand,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it _can’t_. Give it here-“ she took it from him. “ _Evanesco_!” she said, pointing her wand at the sick along the floor, and Dudley saw it vanish instantly. 

“That’s pretty useful,” he said, trying not to think about how beautiful she looked even in what could charitably be called not the best circumstances. “Wish I could do that.”

“Oh yeah, speaking of,” she said, “watch this-“ and she pointed the wand at herself and said “Aguamenti,” and a jet of water flew out of her wand, cleaning her off. “Sorry,” she said, picking herself up gingerly from the toilet, “I know this isn’t the most flattering light for you to see your date in the morning after.”

“It’s okay,” said Dudley, his stomach giving a more pleasant swoop at the thought of being Cho Chang’s _date_. What exactly was happening to him? “Hey, do you want to come back to bed, or?”

“Easy, tiger,” Cho said, punching him on the shoulder. _She’s strong, too_ , thought the train of thought Dudley was having a hard time shutting up.

“No, I-“ Dudley felt himself blushing crimson, which was ridiculous given that they were both already naked and _having a baby together_. “I just meant, you look exhausted-“

“Charmer,” said Cho.

“-and you need rest,” said Dudley as Cho swept past him out of the bathroom.

“I appreciate the thought,” she said, rummaging through a couple of items on her floorderobe before muttering a couple of words and having multiple items of clothing zoom from heaps on the floor and various drawers to her arms. “But _some_ of us have work to get to. Nothing personal,” she added as she saw the look on Dudley’s face.

“Oh yeah,” said Dudley, sitting himself on the bed’s ruffled covers and feeling stupid. Cho was pulling on some kind of long, floor length dress with gold trim and wrestling a pointed hat on top of hair that Dudley had been running both hands through just the previous evening as they- maybe better not to go there, he decided. “I can go get my stuff this morning, if you still want-“ he said, a little uncertainly. They’d made a very definite plan last night. Dudley would move in, strictly platonically, and help out with the baby. The problem was, they’d _definitely_ broken the ‘platonic’ part of the agreement, and in the cold light of day, Dudley wasn’t sure what else had survived.

“Sounds good,” said Cho, preoccupied with forcing on some bizarre knee length boots. Dudley wasn’t sure if any of this outfit was flattering or unflattering – what it mostly read as was _wizard_ , and a decade or so of instinctive aversion to that concept was fighting with the fact that it was _Cho_ under there. “Of course you should still move in, Dursley,” she said grinning. “It’s not like last night was an audition, but if it was, you _definitely_ passed. And I’m gonna…” she looked a lot less confident now, “well, I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“Of course,” said Dudley quickly.

“I’ve got to get going,” she said, pinning on a badge that said ‘Cho Chang’ and giving him a kiss on the cheek that left him glowing. “my keys are…” she waved at the general area, “well, I don’t know, they’re somewhere for when you go grab your stuff.” She looked him up and down appraisingly, and he was keenly aware that he was still naked while she was fully dressed.

“Where’s work?” he asked, trying to sound casual. People in London didn’t _usually_ acknowledge each other’s existence, as far as he could tell, but he thought that that particular outfit on the tube might get more than a few glances.

“Diagon Alley,” said Cho, tucking her wand into her pocket. “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” she said, “it’s a wizard street. Just off Charing Cross Road, it’s right in the city. Come on, I’ve got to get going, I’ve got to be there in a couple of minutes.”

“But…” said Dudley, “it’s the other side of the river, how are you going to-“

She grinned at him. “Oh Dudley,” she said. “I keep forgetting how many fun things you don’t _know_.”

“Wha-?”

“Check this out,” she said, giving him a wink – and then suddenly, with a loud crack, she disappeared into thin air.

_She’s right,_ thought Dudley. _I’ve got a lot of learning to do._ And he mournfully began to pick through the mountains of clothes on the floor to find his clothes.

***

A little after five, a loud crack from the hallway suggested Cho might be back.

“Hello?” Dudley called, cautiously; he couldn’t be _sure_ it was her, after all. They could probably all do that. What if she had a cleaner or someone who’d let themselves in? Okay, Dudley thought, thinking back on the mountains of stuff around the bedroom, Cho clearly didn’t have a cleaner. But what if-

“Hi!” It was Cho, looking a little drained. “Morgana, apparition takes it out of me, maybe I should start flying into w-“ she came into the room, stopped and stared. “Holy shit, Dudley, what _happened_ in here?”

Gone were the piles of clothes. Gone were the mountains of miscellany. The dresser and the wardrobe were bulging a little now, it was true, but the carpet was _visible_. The bed was made, the windows open to let in a light breeze, and Dudley’s bags were brought over, unpacked and under the bed. The whole time, he’d been watched by various photos of Cho at different ages, with friends in robes that he thought might have been her school uniform, or with a strangely dressed older witch and wizard that had to be her parents. All the pictures _moved_ , with their grinning for the camera, adjusting their poses, or giving cheeky waves. He couldn’t tell if it was just like a little loop or if… he shivered… the photos could _see him_. If they could, he hoped they’d all been looking the other way last night; he shuddered and did his best to ignore them and put the thought out of his mind.

Somewhere in the general chaos had been dishes, ancient and encrusted. Dudley had ended up spending some time scrubbing at them in the sink and had carefully dried them and put them away. Books were on shelves: Dudley had to admit he’d enjoyed flicking through a few that had more moving pictures of people on broomsticks playing what had to be Quidditch. He was pretty sure the floating red ball he’d tripped on before was a quaffle – (he read a little more than he’d initially planned.) He hadn’t found a way to make it stay on the ground, but he’d stuffed it under the bed, and you could barely feel it pressing upwards through the mattress. He’d even found an ancient vacuum cleaner, non-magical as far as he could tell, buried at the back of a cupboard in the hall, and run it around.

When Cho returned, Dudley was laid flat on the bed, more than a little exhausted. “I cleaned up a bit,” he said lamely, as Cho looked at what was for all intents and purposes a completely different flat from the one she’d left this morning.

“Oh my God, _thank you_ ,” she said, flopping down on the bed next to him and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “I didn’t know you were going to do all of that or we could have done it together, it’s easier with a few spells-“

“It’s fine,” said Dudley, hoping that it was. If it was so easy with a few spells, how come Cho hadn’t already done it? “I didn’t mean to – I just sort of…” he shrugged. “I got looking for my clothes and by the time I’d found them, I was already halfway through tidying everything.”

“Well thanks. I’m sorry, I know I should be better, but since Michael left I just sort of let myself-“ Cho shifted as if to roll towards him, then paused and laughed. “Is that… is that the quaffle under there?”

“Yeah.” Dudley was avoiding eye contact with her. What was he _doing_ , he asked himself? Cho was here – Cho was happy to see him, had kissed him on the cheek, was thrilled and impressed that he’d spent the day working himself to the bone cleaning everything. So why was he feeling so… annoyed with her?

Cho burst out laughing, which didn’t help. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s easy to turn it off, but you don’t – you can’t… I’ll do it.” She slithered down to the floor, stuck an arm under the bed, and brought the quaffle up, where it bobbed an extra half foot into the air before settling. She tapped it with her wand, muttering something, and it dropped to the floor like a perfectly ordinary ball (it even bounced a little), and began to roll into a corner. “There,” said Cho, “just like that.” She turned to look at him. “You okay, Dudley?”

“Yeah,” said Dudley, who wasn’t. Was she really just going to leave it there, in the middle of the floor? “Well… I don’t know. Just tired.”

“Seriously,” said Cho, “I’m glad I moved you in. If you’re as neat as this, you’ll make one hell of a house husband.”

House husband? Dudley was going to get a _job_ , he was going to step up: and before he knew it, he was talking. “I’m not – I mean, I didn’t…” words were coming out of Dudley now, words that he didn’t feel he had a great control over that were spilling out of his mouth nonetheless, “I didn’t even _mean_ to do all this, Cho! I didn’t want to! I hate cleaning, I’m a total slob, but this… I mean, how do you _find_ anything? How do you live like this?”

“Oh I-“ said Cho, rather taken aback, “I usually just cast a summoning charm on what I want and then…”

“Well _I can’t do that_ ,” said Dudley. “and a _baby_ can’t do that, our kid can’t end up crawling over piles of old clothes and rubbish, we’ve got to keep everything clean, and ready, and-“ he managed to cut off the voice of his mother that seemed to be speaking through him before she got to the word ‘respectable’. “And I _hate_ cleaning,” he said. “I really hate it, and I did _all_ of this today. I wanted to just run to Malcom’s and grab my stuff and then start applying for some jobs but it was hours before I felt like I’d made any difference at all, I wasn’t joking about how long it took me to find my clothes, it was a _tip_ , I was trying to cover myself up from all those creepy photos the whole time, I couldn’t-“ he paused and took a deep breath. “and you could have… I don’t know, aren’t there _spells_ for all this?” he said. “A putting shit away spell? Putshitawayius?” He paused, surprised to find there were tears prickling the corners of his eyes, and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” said Cho.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not this, I mean, it’s not just this, it’s… it’s just everything. It’s been a lot.”

“I’ll… I know I should be better. It’s not quite as easy as just waving a wand, but…” Cho looked around the room. “Well, it’s got to be easier than all this. Thanks so much. Next time I’ll…”

“There’s not going to be a next time!” said Dudley, “we can’t…”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He felt Cho’s hand running through his hair, and some of the tension he was holding in his body relaxed. “It’s okay. I promise it’s not normally this bad, the last few months have just been… rough. First Michael, then the pregnancy, and finding you…”

Dudley bit back the urge to say that it was probably going to be pretty rough with a newborn, too – but he took a deep breath and decided to let it go. There’d be two of them. Cho could do some of her fancy spells while he held the baby. He didn’t really know _how_ to hold a baby, but he was sure he could get a book on that somewhere, or maybe wander around the park taking furtive notes. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to get so…”

“It’s fine,” said Cho, and the smile she was giving him indicated that she almost certainly meant it, and probably didn’t secretly hate him even a _little_ bit. The warm weight of her head settled on Dudley’s chest, and they settled into a comfortable silence, and Dudley realised he felt better for getting that out. He hadn’t exactly been raised in a ‘talk about your feelings’ sort of house – he was more used to ‘go yell at Harry and see if that helps’, but he somehow thought that his cousin wouldn’t have appreciated a phone call on this particular subject today.

“Hey,” said Dudley, realising it had been nagging at the back of his mind, “you said you didn’t want to… do that, um, teleport thing to work anymore. Is it bad for the baby?”

“What? Oh, apparating?”

“Yeah, that…” Dudley made a little ‘crack’ noise as best he could.

“Oh! No, no, the baby’s fine, I know what I’m doing,” said Cho. “It just sometimes makes me feel kinda sick. And right now, it doesn’t really take much to...”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dudley. At least with everything going on, Cho had been keeping the bathroom magically sparkling clean. “I could always drive you in,” he said. “I still have the car. I was going to sell it, but I thought, for the baby… It’s at Malcom’s, I didn’t know about parking here-“

“You could _drive_ me to work?” said Cho, animated. “I’ve never been in a car before!”

“But didn’t we-“ said Dudley, and the sentence drifted away from him as they both remembered exactly _when_ they’d both been in a car together. He caught Cho’s eye, and her face was a little flushed.

“Well, that doesn’t count!” she said, “the engine wasn’t on! And I was… distracted.”

There was a pause of shared reminiscence, and Dudley decided to change the subject. There was no need to _keep_ coming back to how they’d got themselves into this mess.

“So, um,” he tried, “how was work?”

Cho nestled up against him on the bed, and he felt warm, and relaxed, and nice, not like he’d spent hours tidying and scrubbing down every inch of this room. “Work was fine,” she said. “It kind of dragged. I don’t know, the GIMPWRC is-“ she caught sight of Dudley’s face. “Sorry, the Griphook In Memoriam Post-War Reconciliation Committee. It’s… we’re trying to work out how to compensate the goblins for some things that happened in the war a few years ago.”

“Harry’s war?” asked Dudley.

Cho shrugged. “I mean, I guess,” she said. “It wasn’t like it was _just_ him or anything, lots of us were involved. But yeah, that one.”

“You were fighting the goblins?” said Dudley, a little lost. He was an honourary wizard now, he guessed, so he had to learn all about this stuff. “I thought you were fighting some evil wizard, we had to hide from him, what was his name?”

“No, no,” said Cho, “we weren’t _fighting_ the goblins, but they run the bank, and they got kind of… caught up in it.” She sighed. “Your cousin managed to really annoy them, actually – stole a magic sword from them. I feel like I’d be quite fond of him, with the benefit of hindsight, if he didn’t manage to make my life at work hell every day too.”

Dudley laughed. “Harry really stole a magic sword?”

“Well, sort of,” said Cho. “he _did_ have a good reason, I guess. But I can’t help wishing he’d do his own bloody paperwork afterwards.”

Dudley thought back to his cousin as a scrawny looking seventeen year old. “He never really seemed the type,” he said. “Sorry, what were you saying about the, um…” he took a shot in the dark, “GMPIC?”

“GIMPWRC?” Rattled off Cho, not missing a beat. “Oh, they’re just dragging their feet, no one can agree and it’s slowing down everything else.” She sighed. “Hey,” she said, kicking her legs in the air, “speaking of feet, mine are killing me. Could you give me a hand with these boots?”

“Sure.” Dudley slipped off the bed. “These are nice,” he said as he unfastened the buckle. They _were_ nice – the workmanship was gorgeous, even if they still looked totally bizarre to him. “What are they, leather?”

“Dragonhide,” she said, and Dudley did his best to react to that as casually as she’d said it. _Dragons exist. Sure. Okay_. “They cost an arm and a leg, but they’re so hard-wearing. If my feet swell up, I’m not even going to fit into them, though.” She kicked them off, frowning. Dudley saw them settle on the floor and felt like he was watching the piles of rubbish from earlier build up again in front of his eyes.

_Okay, Dudley_ , he thought, _you can do this. Just talk about your feelings_. “Hey, Cho?” he said.

“Yeah?” Cho was unfastening the clasp of her robes, the sight of her bare skin testing Dudley’s resolve to this whole ‘healthy communication’ thing. He gritted his teeth, determined to see this through no matter _what_ distractions came his way.

“Could you, um…” Cho was looking at him funny, pulled the robe off entirely, which nearly completely ruined the whole plan, but when she let it drop onto the floor with the boots, Dudley felt a new resolve growing. Among other things. “Could you put those somewhere? And not just… on the floor?” They could deal with the quaffle later, he decided. Priorities.

“I’m sorry!” said Cho. “I was….” She’d definitely noticed him staring by now, Dudley thought, and she reached for him. “Can’t we just do it later?”

Cho’s hand on the small of his back was warm, and inviting, and Dudley took a deep breath and tried to hold true to his purpose. This was about so much more than just boots, this was about _principle,_ this was about… oh God, her hand was slipping under his t-shirt. “No, I-“ he broke away from her, “Cho, we can’t just solve all our problems by ignoring them and having sex!”

“Oh.” There was a horribly long pause as Dudley wondered if he was going to regret this outburst. He could hardly afford, at this point, to get kicked out of anywhere else, and the thought of Cho upset with him, Cho angry at him, was entirely too much to bear.

She waved her wand idly, and the wardrobe opened, her boots rocketing in and her dress slipping itself onto a hanger. “There,” said Cho, “is that better?”

“Much,” said Dudley, reaching to pull Cho closer to him. He’d done _so_ well sticking by his principles, but… well, she’d put the stuff away. It was all basically fine now, wasn’t it?

Cho, however, leant away from his reaching hands. “You’re sure?” she said. “No pressing problems getting in the way that we _have_ to talk about, right now?” she had folded her arms chastely and was grinning at him.

“Hey,” said Dudley, “I didn’t mean…”

She grabbed him, tugging on his t-shirt. “I’m kidding,” she said, and Dudley found her smile had spread to him too.

“Wait,” he said, stopping her hand. “There is _one_ thing-“

“I said I was kidding!”

“No, I just… um.. the photos…”

“Sorry,” said Cho, “is it creepy? My parents aren’t even facing this way, if it helps-“

Dudley shivered. “Are… are they alive? The pictures? Can they… see?”

Cho laughed, just a little. Her fingers were brushing his chest, and Dudley wanted _desperately_ to get an answer, for Cho to black out all the pictures with a flick of her wand - he wasn’t sure he had a tonne of patience left, not with her hands on his skin like that. “No, it’s fine, they’re just moving – it’s like a muggle what’s-it-called, a video, it’s not-“

Dudley didn’t wait around to hear exactly what it was or wasn’t like – that was good enough for him. He pulled his t-shirt up over his head and it hit the floor. Enough delays: he could definitely pick that up later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was initially going to be a couple of fun paragraphs at the start of a chapter turned into a chapter all by itself! Next chapter will be a bit more plot-heavy as we move into the endgame.


	7. Tea, Hold The Sympathy

Months passed.

The little flat stayed tidy for a while, then slowly got messy again, and then was cleaned up in a huge burst of energy to look as sparkling new as it had on the first day. As the weeks rolled by, as Cho started showing and cursing that she’d never learnt adjustment charms for her rapidly shrinking robes, the waxing and waning of clutter slowly settled into a routine.

Dudley bounced through several jobs: for a few weeks, he scrubbed floors in a supermarket. Off and on, he provided desk cover at a tiny solicitor’s office. After a single night shift at an all-hours café, when he came home exhausted, stinking of grease and having had barely ten minutes to interact with Cho in their whole day of opposite schedules, he decided it was maybe best to call that job a bust and keep looking.

Without ever quite saying anything about it, Dudley and Cho had comfortably settled into a life and a routine that was entirely different and decidedly less platonic than that first night’s agreement hashed out in a Wetherspoons. The spare bedroom had stayed empty and unused, while Dudley’s jeans and t-shirts intermingled in the wardrobe with heavy robes and Tutshill Tornados scarves. (As far as Dudley could tell, being a Tornados fan was roughly equivalent to supporting Arsenal right now: Cho, however, insisted that she’d stuck by them through the wilderness years and that she _definitely_ wasn’t one of the glory hunters who’d come on board after their stunning set of victories in ’94.)

For Dudley, there was a lot of adjustment. He had to get used to helping Cho slice the desiccated frogs that came in the post so that she could simmer them down in an enormous pewter cauldron that sat on the stove – “maybe _this_ will help the morning sickness,” she panted, grim faced and determined as she measured out moongrass while vanishing splashes of vomit from the kitchen tiles. He had to adjust to her vanishing with a whipcrack noise for work every morning, to newspapers filled with moving pictures of extremely old men in very tall hats, all of whom Cho seemed to have detailed opinions about, to occasional junk mail that screamed aloud about **GIVE YOUR WAND A BOOST WITH ELRIC’S ALL-NATURAL ERUMPMENT HORN MALE ENHANCEMENT POTION**. (“Nothing to do with you,” said Cho, giggling, as Dudley flushed crimson, “I’ve been getting spam like this since I moved in, that’s just what _happens_ when you live in a wizarding flat.”) But he also had to adjust to other things: the exhausting daily rhythm of hauling himself around London to whichever temporary job he was working that week and collapsing back home, exhausted; he got used to living in London, riding endless trains and buses, having sold the now near-useless car to fund the growing nursery in the spare room; he became accustomed to quiet evenings sitting on the sofa with Cho, rubbing her swollen feet; to Cho’s hand soothing him as he woke from a nightmare of his dad shouting.

It was a Thursday. Dudley had missed his bus – he’d kill to be able to apparate – and was wearily traipsing back from the cleaning job he’d held for a near record three weeks. He stank of bleach, which had somehow managed to work its way into every tiny cut and crevice he hadn’t known he had on his hands, but there were, on balance, worse things to come home smelling of. He briefly toyed with splashing out on the monumental extravagance of a taxi: but there were worthier things to be spending money on, and besides, he barely had any cash on hand: they ended up converting most of their income into galleons anyway. (A few months ago, the enormous gold and silver coins had been stunning and mysterious to Dudley – now he was able to shrug and happily pay for a couple of butterbeers in the Leaky Cauldron without thinking twice about it.) Instead, he was reluctantly making the half hour walk back to the little flat that, without thinking about it, he’d been calling home for some time. It was Cho’s night to cook. Neither of them had any proficiency in the kitchen whatsoever, but just as she’d introduced him to moving photographs and packages of beetle carapaces delivered by owl, he’d introduced her to the wonderful world of microwave dinners, and they’d both been revelling in it. Sure enough, when he opened the door, he was greeted with the welcoming scent of Instant Chicken Korma – but also Cho, looking at him, concerned.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he asked: she was looking at him oddly, cautiously, and made him worried; worried enough for the tiredness to drain out of his bones. Was this it? Had she decided that enough was enough, that their kid would be better off with no father at all than some useless muggle who could barely even hold down a cleaning job? Should he start packing his things immediately? Should he-

She gave him a quick, distracted kiss on the cheek and the worst of his worries disappeared. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “We just got a weird letter, that’s all – the owl just left.”

She nodded over to the coffee table, on which was sitting a somewhat battered looking letter. It took Dudley a moment to notice why it seemed to unusual to him: Cho had said that this letter had come by owl, but the envelope was a bright (if now a little grubby) white, far too bright for parchment: and on the front, a square blue stamp was fixed, the Queen entirely stationary. On the front, in neat, looping handwriting, was written:

Dudley Dursley  
Wherever he is

A gnawing fear and confusion filled his stomach, and he flipped the envelope over and confirmed it. There, in the careful script of his mother, was written the return address: Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey CR3 1AD.

***

Dudley was staring at the envelope, frozen. _Now? Here?_ Suddenly, the last months with Cho were all some kind of brilliant, terrifying dream, and he was waking up back at Privet Drive, back in a life he’d been surprisingly eager to leave.

“Are you going to open that?” Cho laid her hand on his arm gently, and he was brought spiralling back to reality.

“Yeah, I… how did this get here? You said an owl dropped it?”

Cho shrugged. “Yeah, I thought it was weird because it looks like a muggle letter. What’s wrong, Dudley?”

“It’s my mum,” he said flatly. Her writing to him was unlikely enough, but _surely_ it couldn’t be Dad too? Mum writing to him was all wrong, but _Dad_ writing to him was about as likely as the sky falling.

“Oh shit,” said Cho. What else was there to say, thought Dudley. He made a vain attempt to open the letter, but it had been taped shut so thoroughly that he wasn’t getting anywhere. “Here, let me – _diffindo_ ” said Cho, and the envelope sprang apart easily.

A folded sheet of notepaper fell out– Dudley could place the notepad exactly next to the phone in the hallway at Privet Drive. His hands shaking only a little, he unfolded it and read, in a hand a little shakier than usual:

Dudley,

I’m sorry about how everything has turned out. I am. I wish you hadn’t had to leave. Maybe we could see each other? I’ll be in town on the twenty first. Perhaps we could have tea somewhere? I’m sure you have a lot to tell me.

I wish things hadn’t turned out this way.

Lots of love,

Mum

PS – when you write back, it’s best if you don’t write straight to the house. Write to Mrs. Figg – did you know she was one of ~~your lot~~ them? She’s at 2 Wisteria Walk if you’ve forgotten. 

“Hadn’t _had_ to leave?” As Cho’s pregnancy had started showing, she’d been glowing recently. But right now, rather than impending motherhood, she was glowing with righteous fury. “She says that like them throwing you out was some kind of unfortunate accident.”

“Yeah, it’s…” Dudley shrugged, and let the letter drop to the floor. “It’s not great.”

“Nothing from your Dad, then?” asked Cho. Dudley had tried not to go into too many details about the day they’d cut him off, or about his parents at all if he could help it. But Cho could read into what he wasn't saying well enough to know that when he woke up from a nightmare, it was his dad’s voice that had shouted him awake.

“Yeah, I don’t think she wants him to know she’s writing. She’s asked me to write to the neighbour, see-“

“Wait,” said Cho, “is that _Arabella_ Figg?”

“I don’t remember her name,” said Dudley. “She’s just an old lady who lives around the corner from Mum and Dad. I didn’t know she was a witch, but she must have lent Mum the owl, I suppose…” the idea of Mum going to a _witch_ for help, asking someone to use magic, was so strange that he started feeling floaty and unreal again. He gripped Cho’s arm for support.

“She’s a war hero.”

“Oh?” said Dudley, distantly. In the wizarding world, just about _everyone_ seemed to be a war hero. He had a vague memory of Harry dragging him to see Mrs. Figg back when they were fifteen, when those terrible things – Dementors? – had descended and completely crushed him. Had he known that she was a witch then? Maybe. He’d been much too distracted to really think about it.

“Yeah, she was a squib spy for the Order of –“ Cho paused and looked at Dudley. “Hey, Dudley, are you okay?”

Dudley shook his head. Of course he wasn’t, and they both knew that. He let out one long, long breath. “I…” he found himself unable to meet Cho’s eyes. Not just that, but he wasn’t able to hold his focus on anything at all: his eyes were unfocused, looking straight through everything without taking much in. It was as though his brain had decided that it had quite enough going on inside of it that he shouldn’t try to take in any more external stimulation. Even Cho’s voice was coming to him fuzzy and distant now.

“Do you need to sit down?”

_Did_ he? He really didn’t know. “I, um..” he said. He _needed_ to not have got this letter. He needed to have his mum and dad never talk to him again. (His dad was probably still going to be keeping his end of the bargain there.) He needed peace, quiet, a moment to think, to not think at all. He needed…

Suddenly, the thoughts racing around his mind and chasing their own tails cleared, giving him a moment of calm. He opened eyes he hadn’t realised were closed, and saw Cho pointing a wand at him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” She said, seeing him instinctively flinch back – some old habits still died hard. “I just cast a calming charm on you. It looked like you needed it.”

“Thanks,” Dudley managed. Whatever the spell was, it hadn’t actually _solved_ any of his problems – just skipped him forward a good half hour through the panic to a point where he could take a fairer look at them. He felt exhausted, like he’d just spent three hours in the gym – but without any of the endorphins. “I needed that.”

Cho wrapped her arms around him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shrugged. “I… I want a pen and paper. And to borrow the owl.”

***

The café was small, cluttered, and not one hundred percent clean: not the kind of place, Dudley thought, where Mum would normally be caught dead. The door gave a little tinkle as Dudley opened, and he thought, looking around, that she probably chose it for exactly that reason. There was no chance anyone she knew would bump into her here, her or her disgraced son.

He was exactly on time: it was four on the dot, despite the plethora of things that had gone wrong with him making this appointment. He’d had to miss a shift at his latest cleaning job: he wasn’t sure if they’d call him in again now. All said, he’d rather have been scrubbing toilets right now: at least you knew where you stood with that. When he set out that afternoon and found the first train he’d meant to catch was cancelled, he’d nearly turned around and gone straight back home. Cho would understand, and Mum would… well, him skipping out on their little meeting was about what she deserved.

But somehow, he’d found himself jogging for the replacement bus, making the change back onto the tube, and picking his way around barely familiar streets to find the little café she’d suggested in her second letter. And now here he was, slipping through the door just as his watch hit four, scanning through the few customers and seeing his mother.

She was sitting with a cup of tea in front of her that she seemed determined not to touch, and was clutching her handbag close to her as if she didn’t trust anyone in the building, beady eyes darting around – within a second of him seeing her, their eyes met, and he knew that she’d spotted him too. _No backing out now_ , thought Dudley – he gave her a weak wave and headed over to her.

“Hello darling,” she said, giving him a pinched smile that didn’t convey any joy at all. He pulled an uncomfortable plastic chair out from under the table and sat down.

“Hi, Mum.”

After this gargantuan effort, they lapsed into an uneasy silence, neither of them able to meet the other’s eyes. Dudley studiously examined the menu above the counter, and his mum gazed into the tea cooling in front of her. After what felt to Dudley like about an hour, but had probably been about thirty seconds, she looked up and said, “it’s so nice to see you, Dudders.”

“Thanks for, um, asking me here, Mum.” Said Dudley, and he felt the void of everything they were trying not to say yawning in front of him again. _No point showing up if you’re not going to talk to each other at all_ , he thought, and decided to press on. “How are you and…” he said, the word “Dad” catching in his throat. “Everything?” He finished lamely, avoiding eye contact.

“Everything’s… fine. We miss you, Dudley.” It took a lot not to scoff as he watched his mother swill the weak tea around the cup, never actually picking it up to drink any. “How have you been, darling? Have you found somewhere to stay?”

When Dudley had written back to her, he’d decided not to give her Cho’s address. Well, not _Cho’s_ address, really: the last few months he’d really started to think of it as _their_ flat. He was glad Mum was writing to him, sort of. He was glad he was here, sort of. But he didn’t know if he wanted her to know _exactly_ where he was living. Poor Mrs. Figg, ferrying their messages back and forth: he made a mental note to suggest they send her a bottle of firewhiskey with the next owl. (Was that an appropriate gift for some sort of war hero?)

“I’m… staying with Cho,” said Dudley, after just a moment’s pause. “Not too far from here. We’re…” he tried to think of how best to put exactly what they had between them into words, not a task that they’d ever really bothered with after that aborted attempt in the pub. He settled on “happy.”

His mother gave him a weak smile. “That’s good!” she said, with what could, in the right light, pass for enthusiasm. “And the baby…?”

“Due in March,” said Dudley, trying to work out how much he wanted to say. “We’re not going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl until it, um, happens – we like surprises.” _Good thing, too,_ he thought, _because this baby has been one surprise after another._

“D’you want anything?” Their conversation, such as it was, was interrupted by a glare directed at Dudley by a particularly surly looking teenager in a violently yellow apron who, Dudley realised, was probably a waiter.

“Oh, um,” he said, reading back through the menu in a hurry, “Just a black coffee, please.”

The waiter shuffled off with a curt nod, leaving the two of them to sit in a new period of awkward silence. Dudley took a moment’s pause and tried hard not to get lost in just how _weird_ this whole situation was. He was used to his mother collecting information to _share_ – he was used to having his achievements bragged about, or hearing other people’s scandals laid out in exhaustive detail over breakfast. But here, Mum seemed to be collecting information carefully, only to put it away and never speak of it again. It was almost like how his Mum – how they all, really – had treated Harry for years, he thought, with the hot flush of shame that usually accompanied this particular line of reminiscence. But it wasn’t quite the same: with Harry, there hadn’t been any _interest_. Mum had heard about Harry’s day, or learnt what he was doing, or thought about him at all, only as a last resort when no alternatives presented themselves. Here, she was clearly trying to learn. He did his best to snap out of his head, wishing he had Cho here with a calming charm, and added ‘call Harry’ to his to-do list. He could probably put up with a few minutes of listening to Harry talk about his perfect life – with everything over the years, it felt like the least he could do.

“Well I’m proud of you,” Mum said, with that same glassy smile again. “For.. doing the right thing. I know it can’t have been easy, with… everything.”

_That’s probably the closest I’m getting to an apology,_ Dudley thought, choosing to focus on that and not the implication that he was only with Cho because it was the ‘right thing’. He didn’t know what was sadder – that this was the only apology he was going to get, or that it was more than he’d expected.

The waiter shuffled into view, bringing Dudley’s cup of coffee, which looked like tar and smelled about as appetising, and set it in front of him. Dudley decided not to make the fatal mistake of drinking any of it. “Are you going to pay separately, or together?“

There was a moment’s panicked silence, and Dudley replied “separately” at exactly the same time his mother replied “together.” They shared an uneasy glance while the waiter looked at them dispassionately.

“I need to know for the till,” he said, kicking his heel.

“I’ll get it, Diddykins,” said Mum. “With a baby on the way, you’ll need to…” she trailed off as the waiter stomped away. “Are you going to be okay? I mean, with the baby, do you… I can send money if you need it, your father-“ Dudley winced, “doesn’t have to know-“

“We’re… we’re fine, Mum,” said Dudley – and they were. The best way to describe Dudley’s earnings were ‘inconsistent’, but although he wasn’t great at running the numbers on the conversion rate, Cho’s salary in galleons was more than enough for the two of them. Even the _three_ of them. Cho had gingerly suggested, a few nights ago, that if Dudley couldn’t find any steady work, he could always stay at home with the baby. A few months ago, working for a living would have been a totally alien prospect to him – but by now, it was a far less daunting prospect than taking care of a real life _baby_. They’d agreed to talk about it later. 

“Honestly, we’re okay. Thanks, though.” He sighed, and tried to find another few words to force out of the conversation. “Are you…” he fully intended to finish the sentence with ‘doing anything else in London?’ but found himself instead asking ‘looking forward to being a grandmother?” _Where the fuck had that come from?_ He thought.

The grandmother-to-be looked at Dudley, just as stunned at the question as he was. “I, um…” she did her best to avoid his eye, and actually went so far as to pick up her tea and take a sip of it. From her expression as she swallowed, she seemed to immediately recognise that this was a mistake. “Yes, Dudley, of course.” She gave him a pained smile and set the tea down. “I mean, I don’t know how often I’ll get to see you and... and…”

“Cho,” supplied Dudley, helpfully – how hard could it be to say a name, really, he asked himself.

“-and the baby,” she continued, unabashed, “because… well, you know-“

Dudley didn’t complete _that_ sentence for her, and was suddenly reminded of how hard it could be to say a name.

“But it’s very exciting,” she said, fixing him with a smile that was more terrified than anything else.

Dudley sighed. He really didn’t know what he’d expected. If anything, this was going at about the best case scenario. He should leave, he should never have come at all, he should… But once again, the words coming out of his mouth managed to slip past his guard and catch him by surprise. “Mum, listen, I know it’s hard, with…” he let Dad’s name go unspoken again, “but in April after the baby’s born, we’re going to have a, um, naming ceremony.” _Where was this coming_ _from?_ He thought. “It’s some kind of wizard thing, I don’t know if you went to the one for Harry?” Even after all these years, his cousin’s name could still make Mum flinch. “and, listen, I know it’s hard with…” he gritted his teeth, “with Dad, and I certainly don’t expect _him_ to come, but maybe… if you want to get to know the kid, maybe you could-“ The breath ran out of him, and he left the possibility dangling in the air between them.

“Oh Dudley…” he was surprised to see tears gathering in his mother’s eyes. “That would… I mean, that is to say… I can’t.” Dudley nodded. _Of course_. “I mean, your father would-“

“He wouldn’t have to know, Mum. You could just go out for the day, you don’t have to-“

“No, love, I don’t think I can.” She blinked, hard, and Dudley realised that it wasn’t just her that was crying. “I’m… I’m sure it will be lovely.”

“Mum, please.” She didn’t say anything. “It’ll be your grandchild. Don’t you want to-“

His mother cut him off, starting to stand up. “Well, darling, it’s been lovely to see you, but I’ve really got to be going.”

“Mum, no. Listen, can’t you just-“

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, put down some cash on the table, and gave him a hurried kiss on the cheek. Her lips felt cold. “It’s been really lovely seeing you, Dudders,” she said, completely ignoring him. “Make sure you write to Mrs. Figg.”

“Mum-“ he said – but it was no use. She picked her way through the crowd, and Dudley sat for a moment, perfectly still, as she left the café. Then, his mother gone, he went home to be with his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been substantially longer than two weeks since my last update, so I won't promise a time frame on the next.
> 
> I expect one to two more chapters until we're done, though!


	8. Still Recruiting

James Sirius Potter had, in the first two weeks of his life, done his namesakes proud. He’d managed to stay up all night, _deeply_ inconvenience all the adults in his life, and yet, somehow, win them all over just the same. Harry sighed, ineffectually rubbing sleep from his eyes – he could somehow just tell that in about ten years, he was going to have to keep the Marauder’s Map under lock and key.

“He’s had a feed,” Ginny yawned from the doorway, “I’ve changed him, and I think he’s _finally_ down.” Harry peered blearily at her, somehow still a vision of beauty two weeks after giving birth and on about ten minutes of sleep. “Of course _now_ he decides he can be quiet. Are you sure you’re going to be able to make it okay to this naming ceremony? I don’t want you splinching yourself because someone kept us up all night.”

“I’ll be fine, love,” said Harry, feeling anything but. “The church is only a few minutes from the ministry, I’ll floo in and walk-“ he gave an enormous yawn – “I think the fresh air will do me good.”

“Seems like a lot of work to go to for your cousin’s kid’s naming ceremony, that’s all,” she said airily, “They didn’t manage to make it to _James’_ -“

“Cho was _in labour,_ Ginny!”

“I’m kidding,” she grinned. “I’m just saying, it’s a long way to go, and _some_ of us would rather just rest in our comfortable, warm bed…” 

Harry, who had taken blasts of _crucio_ from several dark wizards, helped answer Gilderoy Lockhart’s fan mail, _and_ eaten multiple of Hagrid’s rock cakes, considered that he had never truly known torture such as this. “He _needs_ me there, Gin,” he said sleepily, trying hard to pull his dress robes over his head without getting strangled by the sleeves.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’m just glad he’s not _my_ cousin. _I_ can stay and do the _very_ important job of watching our son. From bed. With my eyes closed.”

“Sounds really strenuous,” said Harry, smiling, and giving her a kiss as he pulled his shoes on.

“The things I do for this family,” said Ginny, grinning. “I’m a model mother.” As Harry stepped back, she raised a hand. “Wait, love, not those robes, they’re the ones James threw up on at his ceremony. You still haven’t got the stain out, remember?”

Harry swore, and they both tried to extricate him from the dress robes – but somehow, what had been hard to put on became even harder to remove. Their joint exhaustion managed to slow down and complicate everything: it felt like whatever they tried to do, they were swimming through thick butterbeer to do it. 

“Am I gonna have to cut you out of these?” asked Ginny - and Harry, lost in a maze of fabric, realised he was unable to see her face and tell if she was joking or not.

“No! No, I’m sure there’s a button we’ve missed, or we’re-“ he said, trying his best to wiggle out of the dress robes before he missed his footing, overbalanced, and toppled to the floor. Harry winced. It wasn’t the pain he was worried about – at this point, he’d been awake for long enough that the entire world seemed pleasantly at a fuzzy distance. No, what had his stomach turning was awaiting the clatter of his body hitting the floor, and then, inevitably, a dreadful wailing in the next room from James’ nap being disturbed. But he heard nothing at all – and after a second, as the blood rushed to his head, he realised that the swooping in his stomach hadn’t been from fear. It had been from Ginny carefully casting _levicorpus_ on him, leaving him dangling upside down over the bedroom floor.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and though his robes were still over his head, he could just about make out her putting her wand between her teeth and unfastening a last button, letting him pull the sleeves off and be free. “You sure you’re going to be okay out there without me?”

“I think I’ll manage,” said Harry as she lowered him down gently onto the bed. “Hey, not fair, if you set me down here, I’m never getting up.”

“Oh no,” said Ginny, grinning. “What a shame.” She turned to the wardrobe, flicking clothes across the rail with a swish of her wand. “I _know_ you’ve got another set here that James hasn’t done his worst to yet, the green ones-“ she summoned them, and handed them to Harry. With great reluctance, he extricated himself from the bed and began fastening the new buttons.

“Wand, glasses, keys-“ Harry muttered, and Ginny pecked him on the cheek.

“Bring enough floo to get back,” she said, “and don’t forget to bring-“

“I know, I know,” said Harry. “I’ve got it, don’t worry.” He smiled at her. “You two stay out of trouble.”

“No promises,” she said. “He’s developing a _strong_ Gryffindor streak.” She looked fondly towards the nursery. “I just hope he stays down. I wonder if Dudley’s kid’s quite this…” she paused, reaching for the word.

“Rambunctious?” Harry tried.

“Close enough,” she said with a smile. “Any idea what they’ve called him?”

Harry shrugged. “Sounds like they’re being old fashioned about it, so I’ll let you know after the ceremony.”

“If it’s Vernon Junior,” said Ginny, “send me a patronus right away, and you owe me ten galleons.” Harry laughed, while thinking just how unlikely that was. A few years ago, he’d never have thought of his cousin as being as terrified of Uncle Vernon as he had been once – but then, he thought, a lot had changed those last few years. “Come on, you’re going to be late if you don’t get going,” said Ginny. Give my love, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said Harry, getting the last button fastened and lighting the fireplace. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

***

Dudley Dursley was worried.

Well, when _wasn’t_ he worried these days? Last week, this tiny person had come into his life, screamed at him furiously, and suddenly become so much more than an abstract worry about the future – and without even thinking about it for a second, he’d fallen in love instantly. And loving someone so tiny, so _helpless_ gave him a lot to worry about. It was a strange, terrifying world he lived in now. There were real people out there who called themselves dark lords, there were _dragons_ , and there were (he’d learned just this week) giants – and somehow, he, Dudley Dursley, was meant to protect and keep this tiny child safe and happy. What was he supposed to do, _punch_ the dragons? With what? All worries about fire aside, he’d left his boxing gloves at Privet Drive a long time ago.

It wasn’t just the existential dread, though – there were plenty of more mundane things to worry about, too. There was whether he’d fastened that nappy right, and how soon he was going to have to change it. There was whether the boy was sleeping properly, feeding properly – _he’d_ never had any problem sucking on Cho’s nipples, but apparently it was a highly complicated task. And somewhere, after all of this, were the worries about whether he and _Cho_ were able to sleep, eat, find time to go to the bathroom, or generally manage life as human beings rather than sleep-deprived zombies. _Oh God_ , he thought, _are they real too? Do I have to punch zombies for this baby too?_

But right now, he had something entirely _new_ to worry about. His son had had a feed, was miraculously staying clean, and was peacefully asleep in his arms – and after a few days of uncertainty, he was even pretty sure that he was holding him right. There _was_ the lingering worry that, at any minute and with seemingly no warning, the baby could eject one bodily fluid or another all over Dudley’s suit, but that hypothetical was quickly becoming a part of Dudley’s world that, day to day, he was used to. No, what he was worried about right _now_ was who on _earth_ was going to show up to this naming ceremony.

There was Cho, obviously. She was chatting with her parents about twenty feet away, and, he thought, somehow looking _unfairly_ radiant on just as little sleep as him. Of course, her parents were here too: this was perhaps the third time he’d met them, and while he was still vaguely terrified of them deciding he wasn’t good enough for their daughter and putting some terrible curse on him, they seemed nice enough.

Cho’s friend Marietta, a tall woman with a face covered in a light spider’s web of scars – Dudley assumed it was something to do with the war, and decided never to ask - was here, too. She’d stopped to coo over the baby, tried to pry the name out of Dudley, and was now chatting with Cho and the Changs. A few more of her friends and colleagues, people he didn’t recognise, were here or had said they’d be coming soon. It wasn’t, all things considered, a particularly _bad_ turn out. There just… wasn’t really anyone he’d asked here. His metaphorical side of the church was going to be, at best, pretty thin.

Harry was on his way, probably. Dudley was pretty sure, by now, that he liked his cousin – they’d been managing, on their increasingly regular phone calls, to have conversations about things that _weren’t_ beer. He was even beginning to learn enough about the wizarding world to hope that soon, he’d be able to have strained awkward conversations with him about Quidditch, too. But Dudley _was_ painfully conscious that he and Cho had missed James’ naming ceremony. They’d had a hell of an excuse, but, well, he didn’t really know Harry well enough to know if he was going to be playing that kind of tit for tat point scoring game.

But other than Harry, who did he even have to be looking for? He’d toyed with the idea of asking Malcom, or Piers, or Gordon – but he wasn’t really sure what he had in common with any of them anymore. Not just with the baby, either: he’d been drifting away for years now, and as grateful as he was to Malcom for putting him up before he’d found Cho, that time had only confirmed it. Not to mention that there was a _little_ thing Cho had told him about called the International Statute of Secrecy. He’d been too sleep deprived, too worried, too distracted to pay much attention to the planning of the naming ceremony, but if it was anything like the one wizarding event he _had_ been to… there was no hiding some things.

He’d thought about his university friends, too – but even if it wasn’t for the secrets he had to keep now, that whole world was increasingly feeling very far away since he’d had to drop out. Really, everything outside of his life with Cho did. So, technically, he’d only invited two people: his mother, who he really _didn’t_ expect to be seeing any time soon, and Harry. In a moment of desperation, he’d nearly gone as far as writing to Mrs. Figg and inviting her, before he’d decided that that might just be taking desperation too far. Now he was wondering if that had been a premature choice.

“It’s not that there’s even anyone I really _want_ to be there who can’t be,” he’d said to Harry over the phone a few weeks ago, when they’d commiserated over both Ginny and Cho being nearly fit to burst. “I just… I didn’t realise I had so few people in my corner, you know?”

“Hey,” Harry had said over the phone. (Dudley liked talking to Harry over the phone _much_ better. No one expected either of them to make eye contact, and any time the awkwardness got too much, they could pretend that something had happened that meant they had to make a quick getaway.) “Hey, I’ll be there, I promise, with Gin and maybe a little one too. I mean, obviously, unless, you know-“

“Yeah, of course,” said Dudley. “I get it. I just…” he shrugged, the receiver scrunching up awkwardly against his face as he did. “It’s not about _me_ , not really. I’m fine, to be honest. But like… it’s the baby. I wish… I wish I was bringing more… people to be there for them, you know?”

There had been a long, long pause on the other end of the line at that – so long that Dudley had started to wonder if Harry had hung up. “No,” Harry had said eventually, “I get it, D, I really do.”

There was no point, Dudley thought, dwelling on that particular phone call. Why revel in the awkward past, he reasoned, when he could just as easily live in the difficult present? He sighed, and looked down at his son, warm and sleepy in his arms and really, for once, quite peaceful. It was pretty easy to be confident about being a dad, he thought, when they were like this, clean and sleeping peacefully and attracting admiring ‘ooh’s from every strange witch or wizard who came in. Nothing to it. Piece of cake. He was a cool young hip dad, standing here with his _son_ , and everyone who came in was going to _know_ it. Even if they didn’t really know him.

Just then, Harry slipped in through the door, looking about as run down as Dudley felt. He glanced around the church furtively for a second, saw Dudley – or perhaps the baby – and made a beeline straight for them.

“Big D!” said Harry. The initial overwhelming awkwardness of everything in the world seemed to have dissipated, these last few months, and they were back to ‘Big D’ again. There was still _just_ enough awkwardness that Dudley hadn’t worked out how to ask Harry to stop. Harry smiled warmly at the baby, who was somehow managing to sleep as good as gold when he was meant to be the centre of attention. He shifted in Dudley’s arms, fretting slightly, but the warmth of his Dad against him soothed him back into sleep – or so Dudley liked to think, anyway. “And little, um…?” Harry was looking quizzically at Dudley.

Dudley sighed. It was, apparently, traditional in the wizarding world to not let anyone know the name of your baby until the moment of announcement at this sort of ceremony. But he had quickly been learning in the last week that it was, apparently, _equally_ traditional to spend every available moment you had between the birth and that ceremony badgering the parents to let you in on the secret. They were mostly going through with this whole rigmarole, to be honest, for Cho’s parents’ sake. While they wouldn’t _say_ anything per se, or at least not with Dudley around, Cho had said that it was probably for the best that at least _some_ aspect of the baby coming into the world was somewhat traditional, and her parents had thrown themselves into every aspect of organising the ceremony with great gusto. 

But that hadn’t stopped Cho’s mum from asking Cho about his name seventeen different times – Dudley had counted – before they left Saint Mungo’s, including when Cho was in the throes of labour, which, in his opinion, was taking advantage of her in an unfair state. Her dad, too, had taken a bracing walk around the ward with Dudley and the newborn, and had asked some _very_ leading questions about Dursley naming conventions. At least there, Dudley had been able to shrug and say quite honestly that they’d agreed months ago; Cho was doing all the hard work here, and since _she_ was carrying and bearing this baby, she got to name it whatever she pleased.

Harry was, at least, a decent combination of upfront and polite – if still more than a little nosey. “Little Baby,” Dudley said, deadpan, to Harry, and they both laughed. He felt a wave of relief wash over him – Harry was here, thank God. How strange that everything in his life had come to this.

“I don’t know,” said Harry, inspecting him, “I’m not sure if _little_ comes into it. He’s enormous, isn’t he?”

Dudley shrugged. “Well, he was late. And I mean, he’s a Dursley boy,” he said. “In nature, even if not in name.” He’d give Harry the _last_ name for free: he and Cho had long agreed that Chang sounded much better than Dursley, a name Dudley was finding himself increasingly disinterested in. Harry didn’t seem to react to the hint, so Dudley carried on. “We’re always pretty big. I remember Aunt Marge said-“ and he watched Harry flinch, and cut himself off, conscious they’d been having a nice moment before he’d put his foot in it. Truth be told, though, he was glad he had the excuse of stopping himself for Harry’s sake – it was, really, just as much for his own. He hadn’t heard anything from her since he left mum and dad’s, and he absolutely dreaded to think what she’d have to say if he ever _did_ hear from her.

Harry only let the awkwardness linger for a moment, fiddling with something in his pocket – but then dived back into conversation as if nothing had happened. “James is a skinny little thing,” he said, “he’s tiny. Not that that stops him being an absolute terror,” he added, and grinned. “He kept us up all night and only just got to sleep, so I’m afraid I’m the only Potter able to make it today. But James-“ Dudley enjoyed watching the way Harry’s eyes lit up every time he said his name – “and Ginny send their love.” 

Dudley tried to push past the voice in his head telling him that Ginny was about as likely to have said “send Dudley my love” as James was. “No, of course,” he said. “It’s not like we were able to make his-“

“For good reason!” said Harry, and Dudley smiled. At this point, his son started to wriggle I his arms, and Dudley looked down to see him waking up: all his attention instantly snapped away from Harry to the baby.

“Hello,” said Dudley soothingly. “Have you had a nice sleep? Do y-“ but his son decided not to wait for him to finish and interrupted him with a quiet, complaining wail that was testing the waters for a good old howl. “What’s wrong?” asked Dudley, feeling faintly stupid for asking someone who was not going to be replying any time soon. “I don’t think you need to be changed, do you want to be fed? Do you want Mum?” He felt like he’d barely got used to the shape of Cho’s name in his mouth, and now he was having to adjust all over again to her being Mum. Mummy.

His son scrunched his face up, signalling an imminent screaming fit, but Cho had zeroed in on him from the other side of the room and rushed over. “Hi,” she said to Harry, distracted and reaching for the baby from Dudley. “Lovely to see you. If you, or anyone else, asks me what his name is, I swear to God I will be hexing everyone in this room-“ she turned to the grizzling baby, “Sorry, not you, of course. Anyway, sorry we couldn’t make it to James’ naming ceremony, this little one was busy tearing his way out of me.” Dudley handed him over and as soon as he was in Cho’s arms, he settled down immediately. She grinned at Dudley. “ _I’m_ the favourite parent,” she said.

“Good to see you,” said Harry, and Dudley was surprised at the _lack_ of awkwardness between them. In fact, for a split second, it felt like they shared some kind of knowing look: but he _had_ to be imagining things. “Good turnout,” said Harry, looking around the room.

Dudley shrugged. It might have been, for all he knew about wizarding naming ceremonies. Along with the smattering of people he knew, there were a variety of Cho’s friends and family: there must have been about thirty people overall, and maybe that _was_ good. But there was still only Harry to…

“Not bad,” said Cho, interrupting that particular line of thought, “but a few more to come, I think?” And there it was again – that weird look between them, like they were sharing something that he wasn’t invited to. _Well_ , he thought, _it’s not like I’ve ever really had an ex before. Maybe this is just what it’s like all the time for them. How would I know?_ Not that he was jealous or anything, he decided, pointedly paying attention to the baby instead of either of them. No, he was handling this really well. _Amazingly_ well. They were going to give out awards for just how well he was handling _everything_ today. He was-

“Big D?” Harry’s voice brought him back to earth. Cho snorted – she’d spent what had felt like the better part of an evening in hysterics when she’d found out that Big D had been Dudley’s teenage nickname.

“Yeah?”

“Look, I, um… have something for you. Both of you. And for…” Harry looked questioningly at the baby, who returned his stare placidly. Neither Dudley or Cho took the bait, though Cho’s hand did stray warningly to her wand.

“Thanks, man,” said Dudley, all too aware at Cho snickering at this display of uncomfortable masculine posturing. Thank goodness his son was too young for laughing, or he’d probably be joining in. “But look, you don’t have to…”

Harry stretched his hand out, and handed Dudley… a galleon? Dudley took it instinctively, and stared at it for a second, dumbfounded. Was Harry just a bad gift giver? Was this some sort of protracted revenge for the years when all Harry had received for Christmas was a single coin, or a pair of socks, or that year Dudley had carefully saved all his empty chocolate bar wrappers for a month and given them to Harry on Christmas morning. In retrospect, that story seemed a lot less funny.

“I… thanks, Harry, um-“

“Look, it’s not just a galleon,” said Harry. “It’s… special. Keep it separate. It helps you – and him, one day – get in touch with people who’ll be… in your corner. If you need them, if it’s urgent.” He reached for the Galleon in his cousin’s hand and stroked his finger all the way around the edge, and Dudley yelped as the coin suddenly let out a flash of heat in his palm. Without thinking, he dropped it, but Harry was faster than him and grabbed it before it hit the floor.

“There’s a few of us who have these,” he continued, tossing the coin in the air, catching it – the baby’s eyes followed it, fascinated – and passing it back to Dudley. “And I had this one made specially, so you don’t need magic to activate it. And if it flashes, we know the others need us.”

Dudley nodded, overwhelmed. Words seemed a little much right now, but he managed to wrestle a few words out. “And when it went warm just now….”

Cho turned to him. “Harry and I chatted the other day, and we both knew… you wanted some more people here for you. So we put the word out, and…”

Distantly, from outside the building, Dudley heard a series of whipcrack noises. A few months ago, maybe he’d have thought they were a car misfiring, or even (if he’d been feeling particularly fanciful) a gunshot. But now he knew it was the sound of people apparating, crack after crack.

A moment later, people began stepping into the church. Dudley recognised some faces, though not all. Here were a few of Harry’s gingers-in-law, tailed by the bushy haired brunette. There, nearly toppling under an enormous lilac top hat that was flashing out DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY: STILL RECRUITING was Luna, as serene as the wedding and just as weird, an elegantly dressed Indian woman on one arm. Suddenly, Dudley felt less awkward in his muggle suit – there was someone there who _definitely_ stood out more than him. There were people Dudley wasn’t sure he’d met before, too: a sandy haired man hand in hand with a tall black man, a blonde woman, more people than he could keep track of. The church was filling up, the other guests moving out and making room: Cho’s friend Marietta was frowning, for some reason, and hung back to keep talking to Cho’s parents.

“Harry, you…” Dudley was lost for words. “Thank you.” He looked at Cho. “Thank _both_ of you.”

Cho smiled and kissed his cheek while their son wriggled in her arms. “Come on, _Big D_.” Dudley felt himself flush – somehow, it was even worse when she said it, and somehow, he didn’t mind. “I think that’s everyone. Let's go _name_ this kid before someone else asks me a leading question and I do something to get me put in Azkaban.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's official, we have a chapter count. Expect the fic to finish by the end of the month.


	9. A Chang By Any Other Name

Harry hadn’t been to many naming ceremonies. The war had rather prevented Teddy’s from being a real event, and other than Victoire Weasley’s, the only one he’d been to was the one he’d thrown for James. But as far as he could tell, Dudley and Cho’s ceremony was proceeding just about as traditionally as possible.

Hermione was looking earnestly at the front, as the traditional spells of health and prosperity were cast over the baby – but Ron was looking around, as distracted as Harry, and caught his eye. “Dudley’s in the DA,” whispered Ron. “Who saw _that_ coming?”

Harry smiled. “It’s funny, actually,” he replied, trying to keep the volume low enough to avoid _too_ many withering looks from Hermione, “Umbridge once set dementors on him. Well, me, back before fifth year – but he was there. He’s got as good a reason to be in it as any of us.”

“Guess he probably wasn’t getting good Defence Against The Dark Arts lessons at that Muggle school he was at…” grinned Ron. “What do you think they’ll name the baby?” He asked, barely reacting to a swift nudge from Hermione.

“I dunno…” said Harry, “maybe just a Chinese name? He hasn’t really given anything away.”

“Shut up-“ hissed Hermione.

“Okay, okay,” said Ron, “pretend you weren’t speculating all morning, Hermione-“

“Ron, listen-“ said Hermione, and Harry rolled his eyes, prepared for another Ron and Hermione row. At least this one would, thanks to the circumstances, be significantly quieter than they tended to be.

“I’m just saying that-“

“No, Ron, _listen_ , they’re about to announce the names…”

The ministry wizard presiding over the ceremony was incredibly ancient, but he’d taken the baby from Dudley’s arms and was holding him high above his head. His voice, which seconds earlier had held a soporific quality fit to rival Professor Binns’s, was suddenly the most fascinating thing Harry had ever heard.

“As the spells we have cast over him weave him in protection and safety, as the potion he has drunk will imbibe him with providence, and with the support of everyone in this room for the long road he has ahead of him-“ Harry saw Dudley swallow, hard, and felt a wave of affection for him that, even months into their new friendship, still left him feeling uneasy. Cho reached over and squeezed his hand, and the baby was held high, high above everyone. The old wizard continued: “I hereby name this child…” Ron was on the edge of his seat, and every awkward shuffle, whispered conversation or furtive cough in the church had gone silent. “Cedric Merwyn Chang.”

There was a moment of shocked silence as the words echoed around the church. Then, within an instant, every single dropped conversation – and more than a few others besides – exploded into a _furious_ cavalcade of whispers.

“Cedric?” Harry heard from Dean, sitting behind him. “After _Diggory?_ ”

“Didn’t he and Cho-“

“They _absolutely_ did,” whispered Padma, with a note in her voice implying that this was quite possibly the best thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life.

“ _I_ think it’s a nice name,” said Luna, much more calmly than everyone else. She also, however, wasn’t really bothering with whispering, so that her voice rang out through the church like a bell. “I had one of his badges,” she added, a little more quietly, while Parvati sat next to her practically vibrating directly into the ground from this dose of pure, concentrated scandal.

Up at the front, Dudley was holding Cedric, seemingly completely aware of what had just happened. Cho was cooing over him too, over – over baby _Cedric_ . Hopefully, Harry thought, the two of them were significantly distracted with this beautiful moment that they wouldn’t notice the tidal wave of gossip crashing from one wall of the church to another. As for himself, Harry was floored. Ever since Dudley had RSVP’d to his and Ginny’s wedding, almost a year ago now, his relationship with his cousin had been one surprise after another. And while, when he really thought about it, there had been plenty of _bigger_ surprises in the last year, this was definitely pretty up there.

To his left, Hermione had descended into helpless, near-silent giggles. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Harry. “I know, I shouldn’t- it’s just… _Cedric_ ?” Ron was sat between them, struck into complete silence, his eyes unfocused. “Harry,” Hermione continued, her giggles subsiding and a look of genuine concern crossing her face, “do you think Dudley… does he _know_?”

Harry shrugged. He supposed Dudley _might_ know. It was _entirely_ possible that Dudley knew, and the longer he could keep believing that, the longer he could avoid potentially having to do anything about it.

“He, um…” his traitorous conscience was speaking up for him, “he might have mentioned on the phone the other day that he was going to let her have free reign over the name. So… he might not.”

There had been the traditional few moments’ pause after the naming for everyone’s reactions, although in Harry’s limited experience, people usually didn’t have opinions _this_ strong. The service was nominally continuing, the elderly ministry wizard seemingly blind and deaf to anything going on in the congregation. Really, Harry thought, the resemblance to Professor Binns was striking – maybe he was some kind of descendant. The congregation was managing to do a fantastic job of focusing on both the standing up and sitting down, the things they were meant to repeat, and also their main task: the flurry of whispered conversations around the room about Baby Cedric.

“Harry,” said Hermione as they stood up for a hymn, “you’ll have to-“

“I know,” sighed Harry. What felt like forever ago, she’d once accused him of having a ‘saving people thing’. He’d hotly denied it at the time, but with the benefit of a few years to look back, he’d realised it was probably true: after seeing what had happened to Cedric in the graveyard, he’d been determined to save as many people as he could, no matter the cost. And now here he was, years later: he’d made his ‘saving people thing’ into a comfortable career as an auror, married the girl of his dreams, had a son of his own. And today, he was watching Dudley Dursley’s baby get named after Cedric Diggory, and that very same ‘saving people thing’ was kicking in again. He had to make sure Dudley knew, too, no matter how hideously awkward it was going to be. “I know, I have to tell him.”

“Harry,” said Ron, whispering across the opening chords of the hymn, “you know what this means?” It was the first thing his friend had said since the name was revealed; Harry had genuinely thought he’d gone into shock.

“Well, I mean, Cedric was-“ he began wearily,

“No, Harry, not _Cedric_!” Ron hissed. “Didn’t you hear his middle name?”

“I, uh-“

“ _Merwyn_ ?” said Ron. “After Merwyn Finwick?” Harry looked at him blindly. “He got _three_ red cards last season, _and_ he knocked one of the Cannons’ beaters off his broom-“ Ron said, a real undercurrent of anger building. “She’s only gone and named the kid after the bloody Tutshill Tornadoes keeper!”

Harry smiled. A lot had changed in the last year. But plenty had stayed the same as ever.

*******

_“Every Death Eater can rot in Azkaban,_

_Every Death Eater can rot in Azkaban,_

_Every Death Eater can rot in Azkaban,_

_And guess who put them there?”_

“D.A.! D.A.! D.A.!”

The rafters of the private functions room in the Leaky Cauldron shook with Dumbledore’s Army’s raucous chorus. It had been maybe two hours since the ceremony: Cho’s parents had taken Cedric for the night, suggesting that Cho and Dudley “go out and have some fun with your friends.” Dudley still felt stunned at the concept of having any friends at all, but neither of them needed much persuasion: they weren’t sure they’d had a conversation with an adult human that didn’t revolve around bodily functions for the last week.

At first, Dudley had felt like he hadn’t really fit in: but the blonde woman with the braids had produced a near limitless supply of alcohol, saying it was on the house. Somehow, a few drinks later, he was arm in arm with Cho on one side and one of the tall ginger men on the other, he was joining in with various drinking chants he was managing to learn as he went. Apparently, they _really_ didn’t like someone named Umbridge. People kept coming up to him, slapping him on the back, and calling him ‘mate’ – it felt, so far, like a far more sincere version of the better kind of university house party. The main difference, as far as he could tell, was the distinct absence of anyone either crying or doing drugs in the bathroom. But occasionally, out the corner of his eye, he had a terrible feeling that everyone was laughing at him. _Harry Potter’s stupid Muggle cousin,_ he imagined them whispering, _coming here and acting like he’s one of_ _us_. But Harry had given him the coin, hadn’t he? They’d come to see baby Cedric get named? He decided that he was probably imagining it, and when he felt the feeling returning, he treated it the best way he could – another cup of hot, spiced mead.

Cho was swaying gently at his side, relaxed and letting loose. He hadn’t seen her drunk or cutting loose like this since the night they’d first met. But then, she’d been tense, worried – and, Harry, had casually mentioned to him about a month ago, not _really_ drunk. But right now, she was looking at him a little fuzzily, a wide grin spreading across her face. He kissed her, to a smattered chorus of whoops from the surrounding crowd.

“I hope Ced’s doing okay,” Dudley said to her.

“What?” she said – on his other side, the tall ginger one had broken into a loud argument with the bushy haired woman about something unintelligible to him, and amid the general chatter it was hard to hear each other speak.

“I HOPE CEDRIC’S OKAY,” Dudley shouted, a little louder than he’d intended to, as the couple to his right stopped arguing and began passionately kissing. Fuzzily, he noticed that a few of the people around him were staring at him funny, but he shrugged it off. He _had_ shouted pretty loudly, and anyway, he was drunk. It was fine.

Cho smiled at him, and once again he felt all his troubles floating away. “He’s fine,” she said, grinning. “Now _stop thinking about him_ . This is meant to be _our_ night out, Mum and Dad know what they’re doing.” She let go of his hand, drained her tankard, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ve gotta go pee,” she said. “Be back soon.”

Was Dudley imagining it, or did the whole room seem to take a deep breath in as Cho left to go to the bathrooms? _Surely_ , he told himself, _you’re making it up. Just because_ _you_ _have to stop what you’re doing to watch her go doesn’t mean everyone_ _else_ _does. Come on, what will really help you is another drink…_ But before he could find another bottle of whiskey amid the maze of discarded empties, he noticed the bushy haired brunette woman – what was her name again, Henrietta? – whispering something fiercely to Harry and pushing his cousin toward him.

“Hi,” said Harry, standing a little awkwardly.

“Hey!” Said Dudley.He put an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “Listen, man, thank you so much. I didn’t ever expect – I mean, I-“ 

“It’s okay,” Harry said, looking abashed. Dudley was trying not to notice that, even with a healthy amount of liquid courage, he seemed even more hesitant to engage with Dudley than usual. “Listen, um, Dudley?” _Uh oh,_ thought Dudley, _we’re out of Big D_ _territory again._

“Yeah?”

“With Cedric,” Harry said, sounding a little strangled. “Do you…”

Harry trailed off just as Dudley’s train of thought left the station and set off on a track of its own devising. _This was it,_ he thought. This was the end of it all: this is where Harry tells you that this is all for Cedric, not for you; this is when he says that after everything he went through, they couldn’t let a muggle raise a wizarding child. This is when you’re pushed out again, back to nothing. The yelling and the screaming would surely start any minute now.

But how Harry did finish the sentence surprised him. “do you… d’you know why she named him that?” Harry said, seemingly wincing his way through every word.

“We didn’t… I mean, I just assumed she liked the name,” said Dudley, uncomfortably aware that the other chatter in the room had died down and everyone seemed to be listening to him. “I mean, it’s kind of old fashioned, but I always sort of thought that… I mean, aren’t all wizard names kind of…” Dudley tried and failed to find a more diplomatic way to express the sentiment that wizard names were generally just sort of _weird_ , while trying hard to ignore the fact that the cavalcade of ginger men seemed to be whispering to each other. “I always just said that she should get to name him, anyway,” said Dudley, feeling more self-conscious with every word. “I mean, she did all the work, and anyway, what would I…”

Hermione – _that_ was her name, he remembered – dashed forward and nudged Harry. There was no hiding the fact that all eyes were on him and Dudley now, and the dread that had been looming in Harry’s stomach was back with a vengeance. But just as he was trying to work out exactly what this could _really_ be about, everyone’s attention snapped away from him: Cho had come back into the room.

Cho took one look at the room, at Dudley and Harry’s interrupted awkwardness, at the eyes all staring back at her, and sighed. She tottered over to Dudley, managing to mostly keep her balance, drained a nearby glass of mead – Dudley wasn’t sure if it was hers or not – and flung an arm around him.

“I _knew_ this would happen,” she said, sighing. Harry was slowly backing away. “I knew that if everyone…” she clinked her empty glass down on the table, picked her wand out of a pocket, and raised it to her throat. “ _Sonorus!_ ” she said, and her voice was booming out over the room now. Not that she needed it: even the whispering had stopped as everyone in the room turned to her. Or nearly everyone: the one exception Dudley could see was Luna, who, oblivious to everything around her, was sitting in a corner creating a series of beautiful silver sparkles from her wand.

“Okay, okay,” she said, the boom of her voice gently rattling the empties littered around the room. “I know you’ve _all_ been talking about it. I did it! It’s me, the crazy witch who named her son Cedric.” _It’s a perfectly nice name,_ thought Dudley. _I don’t know what all the fuss is about._ “For those of us who don’t know,” said Cho, with a nod at Dudley and a squeeze of her hand on his shoulder, “ten years… a long time ago, there was a boy named Cedric Diggory. He was-“ Cho’s voice broke a little, and Dudley instinctively found himself taking her hand. She was shaking, just a little, but she gripped him back with a fierce sureness he’d know as his Cho anywhere. “He was the first victim of the war. He died, and all of us…” Cho looked around the room, and despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, it felt distinctly sober. “All of us made a promise to remember and honour his name.”

Around the room, Dudley could see nodding. A few people were brushing away tears, and Dudley was surprised to see that Harry was one of them. And suddenly, a memory came rushing back to him: Harry, before the dementor attack that had changed everything, crying out a name in the night. Dudley tried hard not to remember who he’d been, then. He tried to forget the words he’d said to Harry, tried to forget the whole conversation, but they came rushing back to him anyway. _“Who’s Cedric – your boyfriend?”_ He flushed hot with shame.

“Well,” continued Cho, “I’m keeping my promise. Just because Cedric and I dated-“ and suddenly, the penny dropped for Dudley about just why everyone was acting so _weird_ – “for a few months ten years ago, doesn’t mean I can’t keep his name alive.” She had got another glass from somewhere, and raised it. “I’m keeping my end of the promise. To Cedric Diggory.” Lowering her glass to her lips, she drained it in one, pointed her wand to her throat again, and said “ _quietus._ ”

“To Cedric Diggory,” the room responded as one – and Dudley found himself among them. All the hints of suspicion, of gossip, of scandal were gone now. Quiet, gentle conversations started to break out.

Cho turned to him. “I should have said something,” she said. “I’m sorry, I-“

Dudley shrugged. A lot of people’s reactions from today were starting to make a lot more sense very quickly. “I didn’t ask,” he said.

“Still,” she said, “we _did_ date, you should have known…”

“It was ten years ago,” he said, smiling. “Why would it be a big deal? I mean, you’re over it, right?”

“It.. took a long time,” said Cho, evenly, “but yeah. As much as I’ll ever be.”

“And like… teenagers date people," continued Dudley, despite the overwhelming lack of evidence from his _own_ teenage years. “It’s not like you’re expected to _marry_ the person you were dating at sixteen or anything.”

Cho eyed Harry, who was across the room chatting solemnly with Hermione and a smattering of ginger men. “Maybe don’t say that _quite_ so loudly in this crowd…” she said, with a nervous giggle, and Dudley couldn’t help but join in.

He took a deep breath, thinking maybe this only made sense because of the alcohol, but determined to push ahead anyway. “We’re here, at the end of the day, because you dated my cousin, and you broke up with your _other_ ex right before his wedding, and you were looking for a…”

“Co Parent?” Cho suggested helpfully, and they both grinned, any sense of tension gone.

“I guess yeah, eventually. But the point is like… it’s been a complicated road the whole time.” Dudley kissed her, ignoring the fact that most of the room was watching with a barely disguised interest. “What’s one more ex in the story?”

*******

Cho’s speech had moved the night from a loud, enthusiastic drunkenness to everyone being in a quieter, more introspective – though ultimately no more sober – one. As time went by, it seemed like just about everyone there had gone up to Dudley and Cho to talk to them. Harry, looking about as intense as Dudley had ever seen him, and still with tears in his eyes, had wanted to thank her for what she said. The Indian witch who’d come with Luna had wanted to apologise to Cho, for “assuming the worst”. Cho had taken it graciously enough. It was a nice gesture, Dudley thought, but there was something about everyone having gone to school together that, when they all got together, really drew out their inner teenagers. Hermione had said a great deal of things, all of them extremely earnest, and had left very little room for either Dudley or Cho to get a word in edgeways. Dudley was, on balance, fairly sure her heart was in the right place. Meanwhile, Ron – Dudley was 99% sure that that was the name of the particular ginger man she was with – had scowled his way through a few polite platitudes, but ended with a totally bizarre remarks about Cedric’s middle name, adding that Merwyn “would get what was coming to him in the current season”, and “didn’t deserve to be on a broom.”

“What was _that_ about?” Dudley whispered to Cho once he’d left their immediate vicinity. “Some kind of Quidditch thing?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” she replied innocently. “I only picked the _middle_ name because I like the sound of it. I can’t help if _some_ people are sore losers.”

*******

The party was beginning to wind down. The slow trickle of empty glasses flying to behind the bar, and the vanishing of empty bottles, no longer had a counterflow of new drinks arriving. The glass in the windows of the little backroom at the Leaky Cauldron was so incredibly thick and warped with age that Dudley had no idea exactly what time of day it was outside. The pleasant bleariness of the evening was just beginning to be swept away by a new dawning sobriety: sometime tomorrow there was Cedric to pick up. Then it would be back to Dudley’s new world of changes, feedings, and a really quite extraordinarily small amount of sleep: perhaps it would be better for he and Cho to leave as soon as they could and get a head start on sleep while they could.

Cho had disappeared again, presumably to the bathroom, and the attendees were beginning, in their ones and twos, to make their farewells to the lucky parents. Dudley had just exchanged heartfelt thank-yous, goodbyes, and promises to keep in touch with two very nice men: the only real snag had been that he was clueless as to who they were. He scanned the room, hoping to find a returned Cho, but instead caught the eye of Luna Lovegood, who waved at him and floated over.

“Hi, Luna,” he said. Her enormous top hat was distinctly askew, but other than that, she seemed considerably less drunk than everyone else in the room. “Thanks so much for coming. And for helping throw…” he vaguely waved an arm around at the remains of the party.

“Oh, of course,” she said casually. “I’ve been working on my hat since Harry invited us. Do you like it?”

“It’s…” Dudley looked at the hat, balancing on top of Luna’s mass of silvery blonde hair, and decided to choose his words carefully. “It’s distinctive.” Dudley looked at Luna, thinking how long ago it now felt when he’d last talked to her, nine months ago – just a few hours before he’d met Cho. So much had changed since then. These were his people, now: the people who were going to be on his and Cedric’s side.

“It’s okay,” said Luna, half answering the thought he hadn’t yet verbalised. “Before I met Harry and the D.A. and everyone, I didn’t really have any friends either.”

Once again, Dudley tried to ignore the creeping feeling he’d had before that she could tell what he was thinking. _Surely_ , he thought, _surely by now I’d know if that was a thing. Someone would have mentioned it_. “I… thanks, Luna,” he said. “I know Cedric’s going to really appreciate having people like you to look after him.”

“He seemed nice,” she said of the baby as if they were discussing an adult acquaintance she’d just had drinks with. “And Dudley?”

“Yeah?”

Luna smiled. “I think he’s going to appreciate having people like you to look after him, too.”


	10. Epilogue

** 11 years later **

“Come _on_ , Dad, I don’t want to be late, I’ve got to be able to sit with James on the train!”

“Easy for you to say,” puffed Dudley, “you’re not dragging these…”

The trunks banged and clattered against his shins, but he still felt like he’d got the better end of the deal: Cho was carrying the enormous cage with Cedric’s new owl in. She was getting the bulk of the attention from curious muggle passers-by. Dudley shook his head, remembering how Cedric had insisted on naming the owl Thor, for reasons utterly opaque to both of his parents. It was probably something from those muggle movies he watched with James's grandad, Dudley thought. Even his attempts to point out that Thor was, in fact, a _girl_ owl, hadn't made any difference - Ced had insisted from the moment they'd got her that this was Thor.

The Changs (Dudley had changed his name as soon as they’d married) made an unlikely procession picking their way through the crowds, but if what Harry said was true, they were going to be far from the only people bringing odd animals through King’s Cross today – and at least they knew how to dress. Dudley had been to King’s Cross often enough on September first to know that there were going to be plenty of people arriving in full robes and pointy hats: an owl wasn’t going to be the most unusual thing any muggle saw at the station.

“Where’s Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny?” asked Cedric, who had somehow got away with only carrying a backpack.

“They said they’d meet us at the platform,” said Dudley. “You ready for the barrier?”

“Of _course_ I am,” said Cedric, and Dudley had to use his one free hand to hold him back.

“No, look, not yet, let that group of muggle tourists go past first…” said Dudley. Ced might be ready for the barrier, but he wasn’t sure _he_ was. However many times he'd done it, running headfirst into a ticket barrier always made him nervous. And today, those nerves were amplified by the thought of Cedric being hundreds of miles away…

“Come on, Ced,” said Cho, slipping through with a practiced ease and dodging Thor's latest attempt to peck at her; the owl had developed an unfortunate taste for nipping at human fingers in the few weeks since they’d brought her back from Diagon Alley. 

“Now!” His wife and son vanished from view, and Dudley took a deep breath and stepped through to Platform 9 and ¾s.

The smoke was incredibly thick – really, they were still using _steam engines_? – but through the haze of white mist, Dudley caught sight of the Potters, outlined against the scarlet train. Harry and Ginny were fussing over James, who was relishing the attention; Albus was still a couple of years too young to go and was sulking, and Lily, younger still, was clutching Ginny's leg, nervous at the size of the crowds.

Cedric had already zoomed at lightning speed over to James, and before Dudley knew it, the two of them were talking each other’s ears off about… he realized that he had no idea or comprehension _what_ they were talking about, no matter how many times Cedric had explained. Such, he supposed, were the joys of fatherhood.

“Big D!” Harry greeted Dudley enthusiastically – Dudley was, by now, resigned to the nickname, though he _had_ tried in vain to insist that Harry use it out of earshot of Cedric. Harry, Ginny, Dudley, and Cho went through a complicated ritual where everyone hugged everyone else, made more complicated by the fact that little Lily was wrapped around Harry’s leg. “Hey,” said Dudley. “Work okay?”

Harry shrugged. “Quiet,” he said. “No late nights.”

“Not sure what else you can ask for,” said Dudley. 

“No need to ask _you_ about work, Gin,” said Cho, with only a hint of a frown – “after that performance you put in last week, I don’t think we’ve got a shot at the top four anymore. Not unless in the Kestrels match next week-“

“Sorry,” said Ginny, managing to somehow express not one iota of sympathy, “just doing my job.” She looked at Cho seriously. “Believe me, it brought me no pleasure.”

Cho laughed, and they were off on the same long Quidditch play by play that made up the first fifteen minutes of every conversation they had. “How’s everything going at the foundation?” Harry asked Dudley. Dudley had joined the Foundation for the Integration of Muggleborn Youth almost as soon as it was founded a few years ago: they worked with muggleborn children starting at Hogwarts. He answered questions, took families to Diagon Alley, escorted people to King's Cross, and did a lot of very careful explaining to parents. He also, with the help of a few muggle social services contacts, made sure that every child coming to Hogwarts from a muggle family was safe at home, with people who cared for them, and that no one was sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs.

“It’s okay,” said Dudley, watching Albus, James and Cedric tearing off up and down the platform. “They – hang on, CED, SLOW DOWN, YOU COULD HAVE HIT THAT LADY – they wanted me here today, but I said no obviously…"

“ALBUS, JAMES, GET BACK HERE,” shouted Harry, before replying to Dudley, not skipping a beat, “yeah, there's other years for that. The first time a kid gets on that train…" he looked a little misty-eyed, and Dudley did his best not to think about Harry coming here, years ago. He seemed to remember they'd just driven off in the car, laughing, expecting him to get lost somewhere in the station.

Just then, the clock struck eleven, and the Chang-Potter horde managed to rampage their way back to their parents for last goodbyes.

“Be good,” said Cho, giving Cedric a kiss on the forehead that he wriggled away from with embarrassment, “and write with Thor at least once a week, okay?”

“I will, Mum!” he said, extracting himself away from a second kiss, but not being quite as lucky with avoiding Dudley’s hug.

“Got your wand? Both trunks? Thor?”

“Yes, Dad, honestly-“

“Okay, kid. You go with James before all the good compartments are gone. Love you.”

“I love you too,” said Cedric, somehow managing to sprint away with all his burdens at great speed. “See you at Christmas!”

Harry, fresh from his own farewells, turned to Dudley, who was trying his best to hide a tear. “Gryffindor,” he said – was Dudley imagining his voice being a little choked up? “All over.” 

“Ten galleons on it,” said Ginny. Dudley laughed, eager to see the fight about to break out despite not having a stake in it.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cho, “James is definitely a Gryffindor, I’ll give you him being a lost cause…”

“Oh, of course,” said Ginny, “we raised him right-“

“But I think,” Cho continued, “I could make the hat a good case for Ced being in Ravenclaw.” She rolled her eyes at the looks of offence on Ginny and Harry’s faces. “You Gryffindors think the whole world is about you.”

The train was starting to move now, slowly at first, and everyone waved, despite Cedric and James not having made their way to a window yet.

“Dad?” said Albus, tugging on Harry’s sleeve. He’d gone very quiet since James had got on the train, and looked a lot smaller, now.

“Yes, Alb?” Dudley watched as Harry crouched to get on eye level with him.

“When I go in a couple of years, what if… what if I end up in Slytherin?”

Ginny mouthed ‘this again’ to Dudley, who gave her a half-smile, but Harry looked seriously at the boy.

“Albus Dudley Potter,” he said. “You were named after two of the most important men in my life. And if both of them taught me anything, it’s that people can be full of surprises.”

“So you mean,” said Albus, increasingly agitated, “that you think I will-“

“I mean,” said Harry, “that it’s easy to think you know everything about someone, and not to make judgements too early. So what about what one stupid old hat says about you when you’re eleven? It doesn’t _really_ matter. And if I’d decided to write you off, just because you got sorted into Slytherin?” Harry ruffled his hair. “Then that’d be entirely my loss. Mum and I might joke about it, but there's plenty of witches and wizards who've come out of Slytherin and gone on to do great things, and I'm sure you'd be one of them.”

Dudley, feeling like he was overhearing something not meant for him, turned away. Cho was at his side, not teary-eyed exactly, but looking about as fragile as he felt.

“Think he’ll be okay?” He asked her.

“Ced’ll be fine,” she said soothingly.

“You weren’t,” he said, a hint of some of the worries he’d been trying to suppress seeping out.

Cho squeezed his hand. “We made it fine,” she said, watching the train retreat into the distance, “eventually. We did our best. But that was a long time ago. Everything’s a lot safer since then. A lot’s changed.”

_A lot has_ , thought Dudley, watching his son slowly make his way to Hogwarts. He felt full of emotion – not negative emotion, exactly, just a lot of emotion, entirely too much to hold at any one time – that heady combination of love, excitement, fondness, worry, and deep, heart-rending happiness that had first entered his life with Cho around twelve years ago now. He took a deep breath, watching the train grow smaller.

All was well. 


End file.
